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THE DEATH OF HITLER by Ada Petrova and Peter Watson, Richard Cohen Books, £17.99

How exactly did Hitler die? This book offers a detailed account of his final hours and solves the mystery of his missing bones. On a visit to a Kremlin archive, the Russian journalist Ada Petrova discovered by chance that the Fhrer's remains had been secretly preserved. Together with personal memorabilia from the bunker, including Hitler's tattered uniform and over 40 of his watercolours, she found his skull and six files containing previously unpublished records made by the Soviets at the time. Peter Watson's narrative is both readable and plausible, but from a literary viewpoint no book on the subject will ever match Hugh Trevor-Roper's 1947 classic, The Last Days of Hitler.