AT RISK by Patricia Cornwell

Winston Garano, an impossibly good-looking state investigator with a taste for designer clothes, is told to reopen an old murder case in the hope that cutting-edge DNA technology can shed new light on it. His boss, Monique Lamont, no sooner gives him the job than she becomes the victim of a vicious sexual assault. What connection, if any, is there between the events? Cornwell takes a break from her best-known series featuring Kay Scarpetta, but, in doing so, leaves behind the characters with whom she is most comfortable. The one-dimensional Garano seems a poor substitute as protagonist for the more richly imagined Scarpetta and the author’s fans will probably be praying that At Risk is only a temporary diversion into new territory.

(Sphere £6.99). NR

HOMER’S ODYSSEY by Simon Armitage

In the past few years, the prodigiously talented Armitage has created subtle and vivacious renditions both of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Homer’s The Odyssey. In the latter, his poetry glints with wit and energy: victorious armies are “boggle-eyed”, warriors “skedaddle” into boats. When Odysseus, the hero and the toy of the gods, asks “are the Gods smiling on me at last?”, Armitage deploys contemporary idiom to humorous effect. He respects the original yet lightly mocks its machismo culture, presenting Odysseus as a dogmatic, superior hero. Armitage’s version was originally written for Radio 4, but it is eminently readable. With the earthy sensuality of Ted Hughes’s Tales from Ovid and the wryly modern perspective of Margaret Atwood’s recent take on The Penelopiad, Armitage has created an accessible and absorbing new poem.

(Faber £12.99). ESB

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