Paperback: Engleby, by Sebastian Faulks

Faulks's latest novel is such a departure from his previous that you might mistake it for a book, by someone else, perhaps Jonathan Coe or William Boyd. It follows the eponymous narrator along a predestined path from private school to "ancient university" to journalism. Opening in the chilly quads of Engleby's distinguished college, here the shy undergrad falls for Jen, an "indiscriminately friendly" girl who then disappears. Part murder mystery, partly a serious-minded investigation of mental breakdown, the page-turning narrative is embellished with memorable vignettes of Seventies Cambridge and Eighties Fleet Street.