Thud!: (Discworld Novel 34)

Seventh book of the original and best CITY WATCH series, now reinterpreted in BBC''s The Watch

''Imaginative, witty and consistent'' SFX

The Discworld is very much like our own - if our own were to consist of a flat planet balanced on the back of four elephants which stand on the back of a giant turtle, that is . . .

''Beating people up in little rooms . . . he knew where that led. And if you did it for a good reason, you''d do it for a bad one. You couldn''t say ''we''re the good guys'' and do bad-guy things.''

Koom Valley, the ancient battle where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs, or the dwarfs ambushed the trolls, was a long time ago.

But if he doesn''t solve the murder of just one dwarf, Commander Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch is going to see it fought again, right outside his office.

With his beloved Watch crumbling around him and war-drums sounding, he must unravel every clue, outwit every assassin and brave any darkness to find the solution. And darkness is following him.

Oh . . . and at six o''clock every day, without fail, with no excuses, he must go home to read ''Where''s My Cow?'', with all the right farmyard noises, to his little boy.

There are some things you have to do.