Pulped fictions

Hollywood couldn't resist Patrick Hamilton's cinematic, darkly sexual work, says Iain Sinclair. But can the films do the originals justice?

The cutting edge

PD Smith enjoys Wendy Moore's The Knife Man, a gruesome but fascinating biography of one of Britain's great surgeons.

Spirit levels

Philip Hoare brings the twilit world of a charismatic Victorian to life in England's Lost Eden, says Simon Callow.

The lost boy

He is the enfant terrible of cult American literature. An elusive libertine who's bewitched the likes of Courtney Love, Winona Ryder and Shirley Manson with his true-life tales of white-trash hustlers, hookers and abusers. Luke Crisell tries to track down the real JT LeRoy.

With murder in mind

In Camera: Francis Bacon by Martin Harrison: how photographs of bullet-ridden mobsters and slashed women inspired Francis Bacon.

These guilty men

In Lawless World, Tony Blair and George W Bush stand accused by leading QC Philippe Sands of riding roughshod over international law.

A song for Europe

Mark Leonard's Why Europe will Run the 21st Century argues that American foreign policy is too costly to work says Heather Stewart.

The brothers grim

Moshe Lewin presents a powerful and original analysis of the warring between Lenin and Stalin and the collapse of the Soviet empire in The Soviet Century.

Confessions of a hitman

Piers Morgan is never happier than when he's having a vendetta, as he makes clear in his cheerfully vitriolic memoir The Insider.

Bring back Lawrence

Andrew Motion admires John Worthen's bid to rehabilitate the 'outsider', DH Lawrence.

The end of the Piers show

Greg Dyke enjoys a look behind the headlines in former tabloid editor Piers Morgan's diaries, The Insider.

Burning ambition

Jessica Warner's John the Painter outlines the dispiriting but dogged efforts of an 18th-century arsonist. Ian Pindar is ablaze with fascination.

Disgruntled drollery

Simon Gray distils a life lived to the full into his memoir, The Smoking Diaries, says Nicholas Lezard.

Pinter at the pinnacle

Ian Smith paints a detailed picture of one of theatre's leading men in his collection of interviews, reviews and essays, Pinter in the Theatre.