Short, sharp guidance and observations from a journalist with attitude. All books available from Exclusives

IF YOU READ ONE BOOK THIS WEEK

'Prague Fatale', by Philip Kerr (Quercus Publishing), R220

KERR'S Bernie Gunther series is a hard-boiled delight - gritty thrillers set in Germany and beyond from the 1930s to the 1950s.

This time it's 1941, in the aftermath of Gestapo police chief Reinhard Heydrich's assassination and Hitler's subsequent revenge.

It begins with the search for a serial killer and ends up in a country house full of Nazis. Like Agatha Christie in black leather and jackboots. A pacy, gripping read.

THE ISSUE

FEMINISTS are enraged byGirl Land, a new book by former US school teacher Caitlin Flanagan.

She argues that US teenage girls, and yours, occupy a "post-apocalyptic landscape" where they're accosted by pornographers, threatened by predators, steered by social expectations towards exhibitionism and enslaved by Facebook. Flanagan's solutions are very old-fashioned. She warns of what can happen "in the privacy and seclusion of a date".

So, it's time to disconnect daughters from the internet and get strong men into their lives (to terrify "punk" boyfriends).

Critics have suggested that, in researching the book, Flanagan may not have spoken to any teenage girls , an extraordinary claim.

Writing in The New York Times, author Emma Gilbey Keller said: "I wish she had leafed through fewer old copies of Seventeen magazine and the Girl Scout handbook. I wish there were fewer references to Clara Bow, Walt Disney, Enid Haupt and Betty Smith, and more conversations with actual girls. I wish Flanagan had read less and listened more. Because real girls are absent from Girl Land.

"And so is their energy. Stereotypes don't exactly bring a book to life. Nor do celebrities from the last century. Notwithstanding Flanagan's stream of forceful assertions, Girl Land is a dusty, empty place, bearing little resemblance to your 21st-century daughter's colourful, noisy, vibrant life."

Interestingly, Flanagan has no daughters of her own - only sons.

CRASH COURSE

THE Oscars? What nonsense. Why has Transformers: Dark of the Moon received more nominations than The Iron Lady? And Anonymous? Is it really more Academy-worthy than Shame? Why the fuss over Hugo and The Artist? Nostalgia? Has Hollywood stopped making movies for adults?

If anyone has the answers, it's David Thomson, acclaimed as the world's greatest living film critic. Now could be the time to dust off his masterful The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood (Abacus).

First published in 2004, it uses Roman Polanski's masterpiece, Chinatown, and the work of its scriptwriter, Robert Towne, to pick through the business of Tinseltown.

THE BOTTOM LINE

"THE first time I heard a mother of girls talk about the teenage oral-sex craze, I made her cry." - Girl Land, by Caitlin Flanagan (Little, Brown and Company)

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