The Cutie is early Westlake, and the name has been inexplicably changed from The Mercenaries, perhaps as a fig-leaf justification (not that any was needed) for the lovely cover, which unashamedly bears no resemblance to anything in the book, where a red-headed in a short dress notably fails to turn up and start loading a gun while standing athwart an open briefcase stuffed with cash. Never apologise, never explain.

Clay is a highly-placed enforcer for the local crime organisation in New York. One night a strung-out junkie turns up on his doorstep with a story of a murdered woman and a set-up. Clay's first impulse is for the junkie to meet with an accident, but it turns out he has just one influential friend somewhere, so he has to be protected. The police turn up, the junkie vanishes and the cops begin to tear things up, forcing Clay to embark on a hunt for the real murderer, dodging bullets and frame-ups and trying to keep his love-life going.

It's a fast, smooth, easy and satisfying read, though not as singular as books like Killy or 361. There are flashes of wit, but this isn't a comic crime caper, this is a twisted detective story with a criminal playing detective against his natural inclinations and better judgment. I enjoyed it a lot.

Amazing collection of essays, speeches and talks spanning more than thirty years by Garner, whose books I read and reread when I was young until I got to Red Shift, which broke my brain in a good way. This collection reflects his thinking on creativity and spirituality, the relationship between language and landscape, the functions and forms of myth, his attitudes to his own books being used as educational tools and his own mental health problems and the high frequency of manic-depression among writers, poets and artists. They are perfectly written, passionate, lucid and profound. Used correctly, I think they are a manual for the creative mind, lessons for writers on engaging with their own work, and through that, their own histories.