Everything and Nothing by Araminta Hall

On the face of it, Agatha seems such a perfect nanny. She comes into the lives of Ruth and Christian, whose marriage is teetering on the brink (as, indeed, is Ruth herself).

A competent nanny is exactly what they need. But it eventually becomes clear that Agatha is a disaster in waiting.

Knowing that something awful is going to happen, but not knowing what it is, suffuses this gripping story with sinister suspense.

And if you are planning to write a novel, probably best not to read Adam Mars-Jones’ Cedilla (Faber, £20) for inspiration. It’s a hard enough book to pick up (literally – it’s a thick hardback, well over 700 pages long), but an easy book to put down.

Cedilla is the sequel to Pilcrow, which covers the early years of John Cromer, a boy whose childhood becomes blighted by the onset of juvenile arthritis.

Enforced bedrest with no excitement is the prescription from the misdiagnosing doctors, and seems to be the prescription for the storyline of this sequel too.

I’m afraid that Mars-Jones’ undoubted ability to concoct a good sentence is not sufficient to arouse the interest of this particular reader who freely admits to having given up while waiting in vain for something to happen.