Paperbacks

All Must Have Prizes by Melanie Phillips, Little, Brown pounds 9.99. In her all-out, wide-ranging attack on the way the English educate their children, Melanie Phillips points to university tutors who, as more and more pig-ignorant freshers trot through their doors, have been frantically lowering every academic threshold in sight. What are the causes for this "de-education of Britain"? One, Phillips argues, is the schools' refusal to discriminate between pupils' differing abilities, turning education into a Caucus Race with no winners and prizes all round. Another is their attempt to make subjects sexier by pandering to children's natural impatience - encouraging them to run before they can walk, to understand Chaucer but not Middle English, probability but not long division. Teachers "appear to have forgotten that children are children" - in need of structures and all at sea in a world of relativism and free-form self-expression. And this leads the reader to discern Phillips's subtext - which, you feel, is what has provoked the greatest howls of fury against this book. To maintain humane discipline in a classroom is very hard work: maybe the schools are not making it a priority.

Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite, Phoenix pounds 5.99. Very little shocks your reviewer; I've seen it all. But Brite's intense combination of crime thriller, horror story and hardcore porn gets close. She has no less than two homosexual (in this context, one can't say gay) serial killers. One is closely based on London's own Dennis Nilson, while the other is a Lecter- esque New Orleans slasher who likes to have his friends for dinner. The thriller plot comes to a head when these two lovelies get together; the horror derives from Brite's use of a traditional plague-pit and charnel- house scenario updated to embrace HIV, autopsies, fridges and freezers. The pornographic element lets the book down, because that genre cannot admit the kind of gallows comedy which alone can humanise and enliven what is otherwise, frankly, puke-worthy.

Highlanders: A History of the Gaels by John Macleod, Sceptre pounds 8.99. The Highlands and Islands comprise more than 20 per cent of Britain's landmass, but their history and identity are sharply distinct from what you will find south of the Highland Boundary fault. Beginning with a rapid sketch of geography and pre-history, Macleod goes on to give a combative reading of the religion of St Columba on Iona, which he paints as proto-protestant ("Whatever the Celtic Church was, it was not Roman Catholic"). After Columba's Celtic infusion, which is seen as a gain for the Highlands, the story is one of an almost constant struggle to maintain identity against external forces that are either inimical to, or baffled by, the region's culture. In the process Macleod, a Glasgow Herald columnist known for his trenchant brand of Scots Nationalism, highlights many matters that should be better appreciated, like the disastrous wreck of the Iolaire off Stornoway in 1918 or the work of Gaelic poet Sorley Maclean.

Where You Find It by Janice Galloway, Vintage pounds 5.99. Several of Galloway's characters are trying to puzzle their way through the relationships they find themselves in - anxiously working at it, as a Relate counsellor might urge them to do. But, with the suspicion always dawning that spontaneity between lovers calcifies in a gradual process that cannot be reversed, the work is frustrating. In other stories, Galloway extends her range to bring in a child-beater and the reaction of a child to the corpse of his father. Her prose fiercely identifies with the voices she adopts, so that the tone sometimes departs from narrative, dissolving into interior monologue and, in one story at least, passing beyond that into a kind of prose poetry.

Hand of God: The Life of Diego Maradona by Jimmy Burns, Bloomsbury pounds 6.99. And what a life. In a world in which football is a religion, Maradona came to believe he was God's instrument. The political context of his rise reinforced this tendency and as a young star he made statements encouraging the Junta, such as : "if one day our armed forces have to defend our country, there will be Soldier Maradona". In the event Soldier Maradona did not go to Las Malvinas, as he was migrating to Barcelona, a transfer "involving more negotiators than a European summit". He was now nicknamed Maradollar. He was hacked out of the `82 World Cup but in `86 Diego scored two goals against England in the quarter-finals which, between them, define the polarities of his nature. The second was one of the most brilliant ever executed in a World Cup match. The first was a deliberate hand ball.

The Men Who Murdered Marilyn by Matthew Smith, Bloomsbury pounds 6.99. The Great Monroe Conspiracy Debate is a hobby scarcely less widespread and fascinating than the JFK assassination debate - to which, of course, it is related. Briefly, the set-up is that MM's death in 1962, officially a suicide by overdose, has been the subject of a sustained cover-up. The usual suspects are available for rounding up, including Robert Kennedy, the Mob and the CIA. Smith's book is just like a game of Cleudo, even down to a plan of the house. At the end he reveals his Detective Notes, with suspect, murder weapon and location. He has played a smooth and canny game, but I see no reason to suppose that he's clinched the victory. There is even talk of exhumation ...