In [1986] LMCLQ 410, the present writer considered two recently published monographs on the Mareva injunction and observed that it was perhaps questionable whether it was worthwhile publishing a monograph at all on this subject. Although scholarly and informative, both books were necessarily somewhat out of date by the time they were published and could not be regarded as more than fragmentary additional resources for litigation lawyers. Your reviewer is now embarras de richesses, for a further two monographs have appeared on the same subject, one by Steven Gee and Geraldine Andrews and one by Richard Ough. Your reviewer must at once declare an interest, having been the student of one of the authors of one book and (to a limited extent) a teacher of the author of the other, although in neither case in relation to the subject-matter of these books.

Each of the books is rather better than the two reviewed on the previous occasion, managing to overcome the shortcomings of their earlier rivals. Both books, for example, contain useful precedents: Ough has the edge here, but there is not much in it. Furthermore, the authors do not assume (as did the earlier books) that the Commercial Court is the only court in which such orders are made; they deal with all three Divisions of the High Court, and also with county courts.

Given the judicial reaction against ex parte justice that has been apparent in recent cases (notably Columbia Picture Industries Inc. v. Robinson [1987] Ch. 38) and which has slowed down, if not reversed, the rate of development, it may be that the writer was wrong in his earlier review to say that there was no place for a monograph on this subject because it changed too quickly. It may be that now is precisely the point at which to take stock of the