It's that time of year again, when The Beijing Bookworm provides us with a fix of literary events that sustain us for the rest of the year. On Wednesday I went to listen to a talk by JC Burke, an Australian writer of Young Adult fiction including Pig Boy and The Story of Tom Brennan. She had a room full of 10 and 12 year old kids from the International Schools (just how Young are Young Adults?) to entertain, and she had them hanging on her every word. She's a natural raconteur, so what she had to say about writing was all wrapped in the stories behind the stories behind the stories behind her books. Next Monday, I'm moderating a panel called Underbelly – this apparently is not a comment on my figure, but a reference to a theme explored by three writers: Paul French, Chris Womersley and Yrsa Sigurdardottir. Today I read Chris Womersley's The Low Road in preparation, and from the first page I was suffering serious writer's jealousy. It is the tale of two men, Lee and Wild, who are both separately on the run, and then on the run together. If there is a mystery, the mystery is what the men are running from, and what they are runnning to. If it is a thriller, the thrills lie in the violence they have left behind, and in the tension of a chase. It is noir of the noirest hue. But this is a literary novel, and that's not always a term I regard with respect. Too often it's a term used for books that take themselves too seriously and offer too little in terms of narrative energy, or for books that wallow in language without any depth. And this book does wallow in language, but it's the big philosophical questions the book raises about guilt and innocence that will lodge it firmly in your mind.