Only Fools & Horses (BBC Worldwide, £16.99)

FOLLOWING on from two, hugely successful previous volumes, The Bible Of Peckham - Volume 3 contains the scripts to the feature-length Christmas specials, including the tremendously popular final episodes.

The contents are hugely entertaining. Just flicking through these pages, one can hear the voices of Del Boy and Rodney as they blunder through their high-rise life and conduct the affairs of the family firm with its branches in Paris, London, Tokyo... and Peckham.

It's impossible not to warm to this collection of hopeless cases residing in the shadow of Nelson Mandela House.

Featuring the transcripts of the 1996 Royal Variety Performance and Del and Rodney's cheering message to the troops during the Gulf War, The Bible Of Peckham - Volume 3 also provides an opportunity to test your familiarity with the ways of Peckham's finest in the form of the hilarious Nag's Head Pub Quiz.

John Phillpott

One Man Running, Clive Egleton, (Hodder and Stoughton, £17.99)

Peter Ashton will be well known to readers of thrillers written by Clive Egleton.

Peter, former SIS agent, is now, effectively, retired. He has been rumbled as a spy, and must be given a new identity and a new persona. Now he is trying to live a normal life with his wife and children.

Relocated in a Midlands town, his hopes of normality are decimated when reports are received that his former home has been bombed. His past, it seems, is catching up with him.

Throw in the assassination of a Russian, which leaves an old friend running from the mafiozniki and you have a spy thriller to keep you glued to the print instead of the television.

With the absence of any help from his former employers; the inter-departmental in- fighting putting him at risk; he falls on his own well- trained resourcefulness to protect his family.

A few friends, who had worked on projects with him in the past, help him with their specialised skills, but in the main this becomes a personal battle.

This is a well-constructed and devious plot, with plenty of shocks and plenty of human interest. It always amazes me how authors can think up these twisting, turning story lines. Clive Egleton is on his way to becoming one of the masters of this genre.

Annie Dendy