Romanno Bridge, by Andrew Greig (Quercus, £14.99)

1:39pm Saturday 26th April 2008

OH no, not another thriller involving ancient codes and the search for a mystical object, I groaned when this landed on my desk.

Then I dipped into it, and found myself unaccountably hooked.

The plot is wearily familiar. Flame-haired wild child turned wannabe journo Kirsty Fowler stumbles on the story of a lifetime: a clue to the whereabouts of the Stone of Destiny - otherwise known as the Stone of Scone, the ancient stone on which Scotland's kings were once crowned.

Following clues in the form of rune markings carved on ancient rings, she and her friends set out to find the stone.

But a sinister man named Anderson - a man with a fondness for bird watching and with a wicked, flickering blade hidden in a shoulder holster - is also on the trail. And he doesn't mind who gets hurt as long as he gets there first.

So far, all so very predictable. But it's the quality of the writing that makes this worth persevering with. Greig is a poet as well as a novelist, and it shows in the fine style of this book. His evocation of Scotland is peerless, and his characterisation - apart from the irritating Kirsty - generally better than run-of-the-mill. Adamson himself is a genuinely chilling creation. It's not difficult to imagine him being played by Javier Bardem on screen.

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