FOR a while it seems that Downey's novel is based on real people, real Irish politicians; there's a character with a strong resemblance to Michael McDowell, another character is the spitting image of The Bert. That's it, though. Both have the characteristics of McDowell and The Bert and that is all. Let's just say that the McDowell-like character wouldn't be all heart, The Bert, a 24-carat obfuscator. Hard to bag as smoke. Main character is Stan the newsman, as was Downey. As any reporter will tell you, there are the stories you just can't print. So what you do is hold onto them, change the names, and publish them later as fiction. No? All right then. How about a bank robber on the Front Bench? How about an embezzler getting a state funeral? Ultimately, this is a satire about Irish politics and all politics are filthy. Is the book based on truth? What does it matter, the vicious in-fighting presented here as fiction is probably closer to the objective truth.

Talk the Talk How to Say What You Want to Say
By Terry Prone
Currach Press, npa, 159pp

PRONE makes the convincing case that bad communication is a wrecker of businesses, marriages, politicians, even literature . . .remember the dry Eliot? "that is not what I meant to say at all" . . .though of course, that's not covered here. In other parts of the book she is less convincing. The worst airline crash in history was when 500 died in 1976 in Tenerife. The chief pilot misheard an instruction from the control tower.

He thought he heard "take off" when the instruction was really "hold at take off." The copilot heard the real instruction but bowed to the seniority of the chief pilot, who also happened to be a bully. And 500 died. It's a poor example of bad communication, and more like an example of timidity and passivity, which is just as much a wrecker. Here is finished off the lives of 500.

England's Mistress
By Kate Williams
Arrow Books, npa, 520pp

EMMA HAMILTON is every biographer's dream. There have been a few earlier efforts and if they are even half as racy and revealing as Williams's, dig them out. These are fascinating characters, these Grande Horizontals of the late 18th century; we've produced Lola Montez, and O'Morphi to name two of the most colourful. England's best known of the species was Emma Hamilton. Listen to her story:

Runs away from home aged 12. At 14 she works the streets of London, which doesn't bear thinking about. Survives. Finds safety of a sort in Peggy Kelly's Ye Olde Knocking Shoppe where she meets the hypocritical toffs, Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh and Sir William Hamilton.

Willy makes a daycent woman of her. At 60, Willy is worn out and the King of Naples makes a move only to be outgunned by the dashing Admiral Nelson who sets her up in a ritzy house.

I Heard You Calling in the Night
By Thomas Healy
Granta, �7, 203pp

NOW in his 70s, which is a small miracle in itself, Healy has written a memoir which is drawn with novelistic panache and reads at times like a horror story. Whole decades of his early life in Glasgow "razor city" in the '50s pass in an alcoholic blur, but not blurred beyond recall. He would spend hours in a pub and when he hit enough bottles, he would hit the person nearest him, hit the bed, then hit oblivion. He sees an ad in a local paper for "wee puppies." The wee pup he buys ain't wee, it's a Doberman which has a therapeutic effect. Is this unique? Recovering alcoholics will find it an inspiration. Hopefully.

Tintin and the Secret of Literature
By Tom McCarthy
Granta, �9, 211pp

TAKING his cue from the cartoon character Tintin, who spends most of his time detecting, decoding, tracking down characters, tracing his own past . . . the little boy detective may have been the grandson of the King of the Belgians and always mooching around castles, calling in on monarchs . . . McCarthy suggests that Tintin himself needs investigating, needs decoding, if we really want to capture the internal essence of George Remi Herge's creation in the same way that American professors pore over Joyce. Strictly for Tintinologists.