By William Peter Blatty
Transworld Publishers, Paperback, £9.99
An oldie, rendered infamous by the film, seared into popular culture; even if you are scarcely aware of it, you know what happens, and you may even know how it ends. Surely it cannot possibly hold any surprises?
Except that it is rather astonishingly good. Tense, chilling, probably ahead of its time, avoiding so many genre tropes despite the fact it probably established a fair few of them: it holds up well. This is a potty-mouthed classic of all kinds of horror – psychological, Catholic, gothic. Unmissable!