Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince
J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury, £16.99
Has she still got it? Well, when I was handed the Post’s copy of Half-blood Prince, I took it to a pub, meaning to glance at a chapter or so. I stopped on page 282, after a friend had been trying to catch my eye for an hour. Harry is no longer doing an impression of Kevin the Teenager; he’s venturing into the past of megabaddy Voldemort with headmaster Dumbledore, and starting on a dodgily written romance. Patchy, but the sense of danger is impressive.