Lawrence Goodman’s first novels were dreamt up as two self-contained parts of a quartet. The third ‘A Grain of Salt’ has just been published. Evocative, lighthearted, completely entertaining, they capture the atmosphere of the Istanbul’s min-archpelago in the Sea of Marmara, the Princes Islands - an hour from Istanbul but a universe apart. The characters lead somewhat wilder lives than one might suspect from their appearance as one steps off the islands ferry, but they do make for perfect holiday reading. Who knows, maybe fact is stranger even than fiction. John Scott, Cornucopia