Paperbacks: The Bulgari Connection<br></br>Kartography <br></br>Red Dog <br></br>The Prime Minister's Wife <br></br>Anthony Blunt: his lives

The Bulgari Connection, by Fay Weldon (Flamingo, £6.99, 220pp)

When Fay Weldon was asked by the Italian jewellers Bulgari to write an "in-store" novel, there were squeals of disapproval from certain literary quarters. Pocketing her few squillion lire (but sadly no freebie rocks), Weldon retorted that as she'd never been chosen for the Booker Prize, who was she to say no? The happy result is a novel not only untarnished by the hand of big business, but one of the author's jollier creations to date.

The Bulgari Connection is classic Weldonia – a shrewd tale of jilted wives, powerful men and charlatan counsellors. The fact that a little jewellery is thrown in, mainly in the guise of sexual props, hardly alters its chemistry. Indeed it's the nouveau riche villainess of the piece who is always dripping with the stuff – further evidence, if any were needed, that Weldon didn't take her Sloane Street sponsors over-seriously.

The novel's money-grubbing hate figure, Doris Dubois, is a rising media star, with a sparky hairdo and earrings to match. Having fixed herself up with an older, richer man – property developer Barley Salt – she is somewhat startled when his wife, the dowdy Grace, tries to run her over in a car park.

Ever the champion of the too-good wife, Weldon energetically sets the world to rights. Released from jail and perky on HRT, Grace is unexpectedly swamped by a great love affair. As Grace's romantic stock rises, Doris's nose-dives – a turn of events that even the most expensive Bulgari necklace fails to assuage. The novel more than fulfils its product-placement brief; the question of product endorsement is a different story.

Kamila Shamsie

Kartography, by Kamila Shamsie, Bloomsbury, £9.99, 343pp

Kamila Shamsie is almost as obsessed with her home city of Karachi as Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw is with New York. Set among the party-going classes of Pakistan, her third novel is the story of a passionate friendship between two well-heeled twentysomethings. From their childhood Karim and Raheen are destined to be soulmates: they share the same crib, the same thoughts, and their parents ("fiancée swaps") live in each others' pockets. Told as a series of flashbacks to their Seventies childhood, this freshly written and exotically located novel has its moments, though the youthful navel-gazing may prove a little wearisome for the over-35s.

Louis de Bernières

Red Dog, by Louis de Bernières, Vintage, £5.99, 119pp

If you're neither a dog-lover nor a lover of doggie smells (the novel opens with a particularly memorable one), then this fictionalised account of a real-life Australian Lassie may not be the book for you. De Bernières first came across Red Dog's story while attending a literary dinner in a small mining town outside Perth. Already the subject of two biographies, this short-haired, short-lived Kelpie had a reputation in the early Seventies for his adventurous walkabouts ("I've seen everywhere, mate"), and for his charming ways, the farting not included. This is a change in timbre from Captain Corelli's Mandolin, but that was probably the point.

Susan Crosland

The Prime Minister's Wife, by Susan Crosland, Robson Books, £6.99, 232pp

Giving adultery at Number 10 a new spin, Susan Crosland's timely new political thriller has the PM's wife getting up to a little after-hours cuckolding of her own. Set in the heart of a New Labour-style government, the novel relates the history of a flagging political marriage between a Southern Belle and the nation's leader. Enter a Fleet Street journalist with a secret to sell and a bed to share. Inside knowledge of Downing Street and Whitehouse protocol lend Crosland's perhaps now not-so-unlikely romp a veneer of credibility, though the pied-à-terre bonking could do with a little more Currie-style pep.

Miranda Carter

Anthony Blunt: his lives, by Miranda Carter, Pan, £8.99, 590pp

The plural says it all. Soviet spy, Marxist intellectual, Establishment schmoozer, academic bigwig, and – mind-bogglingly – the loyal and discreet Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, Anthony Blunt turned duplicity into a fine art. Carter's portrait of the traitor-connoisseur succeeds on all fronts. Shrewd and subtle in her analysis of the great pretender himself, she also draws the landscape of his times with a delicate pencil. Every scene convinces, from the snobby "Homintern" of Thirties Cambridge to Blunt's "cordial" relations with Queen and courtiers. His greatest love – a Poussin painting he owned – now hangs in the Fitzwilliam, Cambridge, with no hint of its origin. In Britain, habits of secrecy die hard.