A novel approach to outing the enemy within

How far would a BBC correspondent go to destroy a screen rival? It's the question asked by Ben Brown, the award-winning war zone veteran, in a new novel that is being feverishly thumbed in the BBC newsroom.

Sandstealers is the story of a big-shot reporter embedded in Iraq, as Brown once was, and the group of adrenalin-addicted journalists who are supposed to be his best friends. When Brown's hero is ambushed on a lonely road, the evidence suggests that he was deliberately sent to his death by one of his own.

“I wanted to make it fiction instead of memoirs so I could explore the rivalries that go on between correspondents,” Brown tells us.

“You think you're friends but there's rampant jealousy.” Do any of Brown's colleagues recognise themselves? “He writes convincingly and with great pace,” says John Simpson. “Some of his characters are very disturbing.” Will Brown name the flak-jacketed correspondents with murderous tendencies? “The characters are all little s***s. It could be half the BBC newsroom really.”

Barbara Follett, the Culture Minister, was an early victim of the allowances scandal over her private security needs. Asked in RA magazine if Parliament is “still a sexist institution run for the convenience of men”, as she once claimed, she said: “No. Things have changed. Now it's just a 19th-century institution run for the convenience of no one.” Careful what you wish for.

Good luck to purchasers of The Complete Miss Marple, the limited edition collection of all 12 novels and 20 short stories featuring the spinster sleuth. At more than a foot thick, the £1,000 tome breaks the Guinness World Record for “book with the thickest spine ever”. Will HarperCollins, the publishers, reimburse buyers for bookshelves cracked by Agatha Christie?

Michael Arditti places kabbalah under the microscope in The Enemy of the Good, his novel examining religious faith. But is Madonna a good advocate for the mystical movement, we ask at the book's launch? “She wastes a lot of time for people who aren't prepared to take it seriously,” he says. “They just want to be in the front seat of a Madonna concert.” At those prices, you can't blame her fans for seeking help from above.

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