The Passenger

Cormac McCarthy

Picador £20

This is a meandering, almost unreadable disappointment. Bobby Western, a salvage diver in love with his late sister, discovers something suspicious in the wreckage of a jet on the ocean floor. A promising start to a thriller? Undoubtedly, but the rest of the book consists mostly of Bobby having tediously long conversations about particle physics, deep-sea welding, you name it, with a variety of sketchy characters. It is difficult to imagine any but the most fanatical McCarthyites wanting to read the linked novel, Stella Maris, out soon.

Neil Armstrong