THIS latest novel by once Booker-nominated Michael Collins has a fascinating premise: failed writer-turned-academic Pendleton tries to commit suicide one night but is discovered by one of his students. Comatose in hospital, he is unaware that she has subsequently found an early manuscript of his, which purports to be a semi-autobiographical novel. But at the heart of this novel is the real-life murder of a 13-yearold girl. How much is truth and how much is invention?

Collins uses the first 80 pages of this tale to examine this conundrum, and also to explore carefully the last wintry night of Pendleton's existential despair, tracing his doomed competitiveness with fellow novelist and peer, the best-selling Allen Horowitz. Horowitz has arrived at Pendleton's college to give a highly-paid lecture, much to Pendleton's fury, but it is the postgrad student, Adi Wiltshire, who finally tips him over the edge. After praising one of his novels, she then turns her attention on the more obvious Horowitz, and Pendleton feels the pain of sexual rejection, as well as literary failure, which has him overdose on pills and booze.

As Pendleton's book is published and causes a huge stir (recognised by all as a work of genius), there are a lot of questions asked in this meditative, yet thrilling, first part, mainly by Pendleton himself before his abortive suicide attempt ("Was there a definitive day when things changed, when you found yourself on the other side of life?") and by Adi, who wonders whether she has the right to try and publish this work without Pendleton's permission.

There are several interesting moral dilemmas in terms of literature here . . . an artist's ownership of his/her own work, the right to fictionalise a horrific event . . .

but Collins also wants to ask deeper questions. What makes us human, how rational are we, what has humanity achieved?

It's a fascinating beginning, but, alas, Collins can't sustain it, and in the second and third parts of the novel, he flips over into thriller mode. A detective, Jon Ryder, appears on the scene to re-examine the case of Amber Jewel, the 13-yearold girl who was kidnapped, raped and murdered one night in 1977, and on whom Pendleton based his novel.

The critic-as-detective is a nice trope but it's been used before, and that's partly the problem with this section of the novel. Everything here has been used before.

It's the problem of crime fiction as a genre, why it never wins the prizes its proficients say it should. Collins can quote from Crime And Punishment if he likes (crime fans would argue this is the greatest 'crime novel'); but it doesn't alter the fact that the moral dilemmas he sets up in the first part of his novel aren't followed through.

Instead, we have glimpses into the disaffected Ryder's private life (alienated, naturally, from his family life . . .

are there are any happy detectives? ) as he trawls through the evidence related to Amber Jewel's murder, speaks to her white-trash sister and boyfriend, tackles the relatives of previous murder victims, and questions Adi over her connection with Pendleton's book. Ryder soon makes the connection between Pendleton and Jewel, and the press get hold of it, condemning Pendleton as a murderer.

Ryder's mission then is to establish the truth . . . in this age of post-modern games, however, what do we even mean by truth?

There are a lot of questions that the crime or detective genre sets up too about our world and the way we operate in it, but Collins's narrative is too caught up in the action to ponder them for long. This is nevertheless an intelligent and compelling read that had at the very least the beginnings of a great novel, even if by the end it succeeds primarily as a pretty good one.