"Dead Air" is the latest novel by best-selling author Iain Banks.

It's set among pubs, clubs and geezers of extreme dodginess in contemporary London.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

Watch the whole programme - 30 August 2002

KIRSTY WARK:
Denise, Iain Banks said he loves page-turners and wanted his readers have a page-turner. Did you turn the pages?

DENISE MINA:
I did, but that was partly because I had to read it for the programme. This is the first Iain Banks book I have read, I had no idea what to expect. It took me a while to get into it.

I found the central character who's a shock jock and rants about politics quite difficult to like. He's very lecherous, very leery.

There are a couple of things about the book in terms of how he does things. He name-checks things a lot. He gets a lot of the name-checks wrong.

I think he's actually trying to do something quite interesting after September 11th. He name-checks Chomsky, at the beginning.

I think a lot of the book is like a catalogue of Chomsky's theories, about permitted speech and taboo speech and speech acts, the manufacturer of consent and things like this that. He works his way through them.

There is a central problem and that is the love interest, with this woman Celia who is a black woman with a French accent who wears stockings and suspenders. She pays for everything. She doesn't want to have closeness. She wants sex.

KIRSTY WARK:
In incredible hotels all over London.

DENISE MINA:
He never comments on any of the politics of that. It's as if he has learnt about gender politics from watching On The Buses.

He leers after his friend's teenage daughter. He doesn't talk about that. Or sexualisation of young women. It totally undoes any good he's done in the book.

KIRSTY WARK:
The idea of a left-wing shock jock. Iain Banks said he did that because every shock jock is a right-winger. Is it possible to have a left wing shock jock for a start?

PAUL MORLEY:
It felt like one of his science fiction books. That they this have this Nicky Campbell, Chris Moyles, James Whale character who gets the Naomi Campbell woman is pure science fiction.

The lefty shock jock element of Howard Stern, we don't have in this country. I thought it was like Jackie Collins for fans of Phil Collins, or Jeffrey Archer for Q readers. The way the twin towers things were brought into. It was like rancid butter that was smeared.

KIRSTY WARK:
It was. It seemed like he'd appropriated September 11th. That allowed the publishers to go "Oh, goody, let's have a tacky cover."

ADAM MARS-JONES:
That cover is repeated at the beginning of every chapter, so you can't let it go. You are not allowed to see it as incidental. I think I can speak on some authority on the question of writing fast.

I have battled successfully with the urge to overproduce. I have to say the idea that when evenings draw in you start writing a novel doesn't seem to me a sensible approach. The fact that it takes six weeks means that you are quick with the needles.

KIRSTY WARK:
I think that there is a bit of dissembling here, because Banks plans like mad and then goes for it. Where has been really good in the past is in fuelling tensions.

For example, there is a great scene in this book in the house of the gangster where he gets in and then he's going to be discovered. The quality of writing there is so much better.

PAUL MORLEY:
It was like a good episode of Lovejoy in the end.

DENISE MINA:
But there are bits which are beautiful, the description of the smell of�

PAUL MORLEY:
I'm sure if he took seven weeks he would be a good writer.

ADAM MARS-JONES:
There are some people who produce every year, like Anita Brookner, where things get less and less vital every time.

He's not like Ruth Randall, who seems to be working through counties, through crimes, through psychologies, to create a compendium of everything she can do.

I think semi-retirement, which means a book only two years will do him nothing but good .

PAUL MORLEY:
It's two week book, I think.