MYRON Bolitar - former top basketball player turned sports agent-cum-private investigator - is one of contemporary fiction's unsung heroes.

In One False Move (Orion, £12.99), Harlan Coben's leading man is asked to look after the interests of young and beautiful basketball player, Brenda Slaughter. There's only one catch. The wise-cracking Bolitar has to be her bodyguard and private investigator as well.

Her father, Horace, an old friend of Bolitar's has gone missing, and Brenda herself fears for her life. Bolitar is convinced that the incidents are linked to the mysterious disappearance of Brenda's mother 20 years ago.

Soon Bolitar and his rich financial advisor friend Win, who has more weapons than a small African country, become entwined in murder and deceit involving local politicians and gangsters.

To cap it all, in true Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner fashion, Bolitar falls in love with his charge.

But will there be a happy ending? That would be telling.

Like all Coben's novels, One False Move is an addictive read. A clever plot, fascinating characters and a twist which will leave you spinning.

When the strap across the book reads "as Good as Harlan Coben or your money back", you're asking for trouble.

Jodi Compton's debut novel, The 37th Hour (Hodder & Stoughton, £10), is an entertaining read, but it's not a patch on Coben. It centres on Detective Sarah Pribek who works on the missing persons squad in Minneapolis.

Her partner, and good friend, is on compassionate leave after her young daughter was raped and murdered. The killer escaped justice due to a legal technicality.

Now Pribeck's husband, Michael Shiloh, has gone missing. The undercover cop was due to take up a new job with the FBI, but he never turned up. A packed bag found under his bed forces Pribeck to accept something is wrong, and she starts to investigate. As she digs deeper into her husband's past, she begins to realise just how little she knows about him.

This is a promising debut from Compton, tautly-written, with strong characters and a healthy dose of twists and turns, but comparing her to Coben at such an early stage in her career is rather unfair.

John Grisham's The Last Juror (Century, £12.99) is not all that it seems. Yes, it's a legal thriller, but it's much, much more than that. It's probably Grisham's best novel in a decade.

Set in Ford County, Mississippi, it tells the story of 23-year-old college drop-out Willie Traynor, who joins the colourful weekly newspaper, The Ford County Times.

When the paper goes bankrupt, Traynor buys it with the help of his rich grandmother.

The future of the paper looks grim until a young mother is murdered. Traynor reports all the grisly details and the paper begins to prosper.

The accused, Danny Padgitt, is found guilty even though he has threatened revenge on all the jurors if they convict him.

Padgitt escapes the death penalty and nine years later he is freed on parole. Then the jurors begin to die, one by one. A superb read from cover to cover.

Updated: 09:13 Wednesday, February 25, 2004