Perfect timing for anti-hero of 60s

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

IF YOU READ ONE THING THIS WEEK. . .

'A Confederacy of Dunces', by John Kennedy Toole (Penguin), R120

TOOLE wrote his rambunctious masterpiece in the early 1960s, but committed suicide in 1969 after a slew of rejection slips from publishers. His mother eventually saw to its publication, and it won a Pulitzer in 1981.

Recently reissued, along with works by F Scott Fitzgerald, Hunter S Thompson, Anthony Burgess, Kurt Vonnegut and Jack Kerouac, among others, as part of the Penguin Essentials series, the unhinged adventures of Toole's unforgettable anti-hero - hotdog vendor Ignatius J Reilly, fat, flatulent and hell-bent on rescuing a naked female philosopher as he tears through a New Orleans "famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians" - make perfect sense as the Republican primaries unfold.

THE ISSUE

THOSE whose interest in the seamier side of Victorian London has perhaps been piqued by the Dickens bicentenary may want to look out for two exciting new books - The Pleasures of Men, by Kate Williams (Michael Joseph), and Little Bones, by Janette Jenkins (Chatto & Windus).

In the former, a promising debut from Williams, a serial killer is preying on shopgirls and prostitutes in the East End of London a good 40 years before Jack the Ripper got the idea. It's nasty stuff - our villain rips open his victims' chests and then stuffs hair into their mouths - and one reviewer has fittingly labelled the book "part bodice-ripper, part slasher".

Jenkins' work, though, is perhaps the more literary and accomplished. Its narrator, Jane Stretch, is a crippled young woman who is an assistant to an abortionist whose clients are Covent Garden chorus girls hoping to get rid of "inconveniences". When Stretch and her "doctor" employer are asked to abort a foetus without the mother's knowledge by its "inconvenienced" father, a music hall singer, the narrative enters a somewhat intriguing world of "unclear morality and conflicting sympathies", as one critic put it.

CRASH COURSE

NOVELIST Elmore Leonard, 87 next birthday, shows no sign of slowing down. His new book, Raylan (W&N), is out later this month. Its appearance has much to do with the popularity of Justified, the hit TV series starring Timothy Olyphant as US marshal Raylan Givens which was based on a Leonard short story, Fire in the Hole.

Leonard is a master of dialogue. In 2001, he wrote an instructive essay for the New York Times, on his 10 rules for writing. Typically, there was an 11th: "My most important rule is one that sums up the 10. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."

THE BOTTOM LINE

"IN THE same way, if you are kissed, kiss back." - The Kama Sutra, by Vatsyayana and newly translated by AND Haksar (Penguin Books).

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