Those who fancy a raw alternative to airport thrillers for summer reading may be stimulated by books about life on the wrong side of the law, suggests James Morton

A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gunby Razor SmithPenguin Viking, hardback, 14.99

There is a theory among some criminologists that the memoir is the purest piece of research available, citing Clifford Shaw's The Jack Roller - the story of a criminal in the US during the Great Depression - as the touchstone.

Criminals' memoirs have been in and out of fashion for years.

Most of them have been ghosted, but Noel Smith's work is an exception and is all his own.

Over the years, he has written for a number of magazines and newspapers on aspects of the prison system and now - serving a life sentence for armed robbery - he has produced his life story.

Perhaps I should now disclose an interest.

In another life, I published a number of his pieces and so it may be thought I am generally well disposed to his writing.

For those who have read books by criminal luminaries such as Frank Fraser, Lennie McLean and Freddie Foreman, Smith's overall story is depressingly familiar - in his case a feckless fighting father, hard-working mother, childhood poverty, truancy, petty crime, being fitted and beaten up by the police, prison, brutality by the warders, fighting, better-class crime, more prison, parole, more crime, more prison.

The circle remains unbroken.

The difference is that Fraser and Co were mostly from an earlier generation.

It is difficult to believe that the conditions in prison were still the same for Smith during the 1970s and 1980s as they were for Fraser during the 1940s and 1950s.

But nothing seems to have changed.

Think how this past month there have been allegations that black and white prisoners have been put in the same cell while warders bet on how long it would take for a fight to break out.

Nor, for their part, do the prisoners seem to have changed.

Parcels of excreta are still tipped over unsuspecting warders whenever possible.

Smith claims his troubles started with a plea bargain that went wrong.

Certainly in the days of which he writes, the plea bargain relied a great deal on the nod and the wink.

'If he pleads he will see daylight by noon,' was one famous promise.

What the judge had in mind was noon in a few years' time and the prisoner was understandably aggrieved.

A similar thing seems to have happened to Smith.

He was, he says, promised a six-month sentence for a robbery and other offences.

Instead, he ended with a detention for three years under the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 - a sentence which eliminated the possibility of any remission.

He suggests the prosecution was going to ask the judge for the lesser sentence and that he was betrayed.

I do not think he can be quite right.

Very often the prosecution did not attend the informal plea bargain and, in court, it has never been the prosecution's function to seek a particular sentence.

But that does not mean the gist of the story is wrong.

From there - full of resentment and a sense of betrayal - it is downhill all the way.

The prison gates ceaselessly revolve on him.

Periods of liberty are short, opportunities neglected and ensuing sentences increasingly harsh.

He is now serving life sentences in Grendon Underwood having - he says - learned his lesson after the suicide of his son.

Those who believe that prison does not work will find overwhelming support for their arguments.

Curiously, in an echo of Fraser, the one good thing about prison has been, as Smith freely admits, that it not only taught him to read and write but it gave him a love of literature.

There is no doubt that Smith can write and write well - his short pieces prove that.

Apparently, some 45,000 words were cut from the book but it could still have done with firmer editing.

The mind is numbed by the continuous round of beatings, slashings and other assorted violence.

But that has been Smith's life.

Written in Bloodby Colin and Damon WilsonConstable and Robinson, paperback, 9.99

There is always something new in the way of investigation into crime.

Only this month in R v Luttrell (The Times, 8 June) we have had the Court of Appeal set out guidelines for the acceptance of lip-reading evidence from a video.

Have you ever wondered how fingerprints or the science of ballistics came to be accepted by the courts? How the lie detector and evidence obtained by hypnosis became the rage and were then to an extent discredited? In their revised and expanded history of forensic detection, the Wilsons provide all the answers, tracing the development of the disciplines both in England and abroad.

All the usual suspects can be found, from Jack the Ripper - of whom Colin Wilson has always been particularly fond - to Charles Manson and Peter Sutcliffe, but there are literally dozens of unusual ones.

One such is the 1936 case of Nancy Titterton, whose killer was caught by the discovery of a single strand of horsehair.

As can be expected, a section deals with the development in the use of DNA techniques and this, and the other detective methods, are explained lucidly in what is a definitive account of the science.

Inside the Mind of a Killerby Jean-Franois Abgrall and Samuel LuretProfile Books, paperback, 8.99

On Sunday 14 May 1989, the body of Aline Prs - a middle-aged woman - was found on a beach near Brest.

She had been stabbed to death.

Mr Abgrall, the investigating officer, recounts the trail that led to the conviction of vagrant Francis Heaulme, believed to have been responsible for some 40 murders across France.

Within a month, he was in police custody and released for lack of evidence.

The book, a bestseller in France, provides an interesting insight into police procedure - and the French inquisitorial system - as Heaulme prevaricates, and twists and turns to avoid conviction and lays the blame for his killings on a number of hapless people around him.

And if we think miscarriages of justice can occur only in the combative world of the accusatorial system, then the final pages show that the inquisitorial approach can equally well come up with the wrong answers.

Nothing Lostby John Gregory DunneAlfred A Knopf, hardback, 18.50

In what is sadly his last novel, Mr Dunne dissects the morals of the US legal profession through the case of a drifter accused of a truly horrific murder of an African-American man in a small mid-west town.

The case quickly becomes a media circus with the victim, Edgar Parlance, portrayed as a folk hero.

But in Mr Dunne's novels, things are rarely as they seem.

There is something that does not really add up.

It is only a matter of time before two dead-beats are arrested and one decides the best way to avoid the electric chair is to give evidence against the other.

Over the years, Mr Dunne has provided a wry and invariably cynical look at the legal system and its practitioners.

In Playland - his last novel, and very much a roman--clef - he traced the descent of the childhood star Blue Tyler to homelessness.

Now Tyler's daughter - who was adopted by lawyers in childhood - leads for the defence along with the gay narrator, Max Cline.

Given her parentage - her father was the fictional equivalent of Bugsy Siegel - it is not surprising that she is an emotional mess.

The lawyer for the prosecution is also carrying a great deal of baggage.

His brother drowned and shortly afterwards his father committed suicide.

Mr Dunne is a funny writer aiming at a wide range of targets - and hitting them - from inept lawyers, prosecutorial misconduct and college football heroes to the penal system, the death penalty, the media and politics in what is a fine novel.

Midnight Cabby James W NicholCanongate, paperback, 9.99

Walker Devereux is found clinging to a fence by the roadside, abandoned at the age of three.

The only clues to his identity are a photograph and a thoroughly enigmatic letter found on him.

Inquiries in the locality lead nowhere.

He is adopted and brought up by the Devereux family and now - at the age of 19 - he goes to Toronto, determined to trace his mother.

He takes work at one of the many mini-cab offices and starts investigating, only to find that someone is already a step ahead of him.

This is a most entertaining thriller with an engaging hero and a really sparky heroine.

The twists and turns in the plot all have logical explanations and there is a thoroughly credible villain.

Shantaramby Gregory David RobertsLittle Brown, 16.99

We have travelled full circle from Razor Smith.

Roberts, once successful in the media, took to heroin and robbery in a big way.

In return he received a lengthy sentence, escaped and made his way by stages to India, where he was involved with the Indian mafia, Bollywood and the street people for whom he set up a rudimentary medical clinic.

Recaptured, he was returned to prison and began to write this autobiographical novel of his Indian experiences.

If you like Wilbur Smith's sagas then this - with its fires, murders, sacrifice, loyalty, betrayal and beautiful women - will appeal to you.

There is also an account of life in an Australasian and an Indian prison that would make life in Dartmoor seem an easy way to do one's time.

Again, with the book running to nearly 1,000 pages, someone could usefully have taken more of the blue pencil to it.

But if you are travelling to any law conferences this year, then you will be half-way across the Atlantic before you look out of the window.

James Morton is freelance journalist and former criminal law solicitor