"But I'd just get past the first few pages and then I'd start to doze off. They can be really good parts, and I like to watch them on airplanes, but I'd much rather get a script like Liar, because, in the end, if you do a whole series of those films, then that's what you've become. And one of its greatest strengths is the courage with which Sam tackles the aftermath of her own ordeal.The Locust Farm by Jeremy Dronfield (Headline, pounds 9.99) has, by contrast, no satisfying coup of an ending, no complexity of psychological motivation. It is small, like most of Roth's films, but it's big on style, intelligence, atmosphere and acting. You may be rich, but I'd rather be an actor all of my life than somebody who knows a lot about cigars." Written and directed by Jonas and Joshua Pate, identical twin brothers making their feature debut, Liar is a pitch-black thriller which showcases the London-born thespian at his most cruel.

But unlike his old friend and fellow "Britpacker", Gary Oldman, who these days pops up mostly in hokum like Air Force One and The Fifth Element, Roth still prefers to appear in less lucrative, but artistically more rewarding, small-scale features, such as his latest film, Liar. And it's not because the opportunity to enter the world of blockbusters didn't present itself after his close encounter with Oscar "I got offered all those kinds of movies," he confirms. Tim Roth garnered an Academy Award nomination for his flamboyant performance as a murderous fop in Rob Roy, and could have used it to secure roles in big-budget Hollywood popcorn movies. The unnecessarily convoluted plot features a foolish woman who has made a trauma out of a minor tragedy in her life: and who, one rainy night, shelters - what lone woman would? - a stranger on her isolated farm The stranger says he is amnesiac, but he's pretending And then.. but no, I won't bore you with the rest Just read one of the others.. There's some improbable violence; an improbable coincidence involving identical twins; and a villain who bounces implausibly back into the fray after a shooting should have laid him low.

After a half-bottle of malt, our Maur is off to protect the real victims: the women ex-patients of George I Psychiatric Ward who were tortured during their incarceration there. Funny, raw, compassionate, often brutal, Garnethill turns a wry humour on the shortcomings of its very human characters. Nicci French - alias husband-and-wife team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French - has also written a winner in The Safe House (Michael Joseph, pounds 10). Nineteen- year-old Finn has had her throat slashed in an attack which left both her parents dead. Post-traumatic stress specialist Samantha Laschen, who has left London with her small daughter Elsie to live in the Fens (where Sam's dyed red hair and metropolitan gear are decidedly out of place) agrees to offer Finn a safe house Finn becomes a friend to Sam, an adored companion to Elsie.

But is she something more to Sam's lover, Danny? The physical safe house is mirrored by a safe house of the mind: the imagined place to which Sam and Elsie retreat - in which they choose their surroundings in a private game. Both idylls are soon invaded with a brutality which leaves Sam bereaved and baffled. Apart from an incredible sequence in which Sam swims to shore through stormy seas after the boat on which she is trapped with a homicidal maniac sinks, this is a thoughtful investigation of the realities of post-traumatic stress. As if that weren't enough, Maureen wakes one morning to find her lover tied to a chair with his throat cut. The police give Maureen a hard time, but she's as feisty as they come Even her dead lover's creepy MEP mother cannot faze her.