Our journey through the arc and pages of a book is often in the safe and knowing words of a narrator. But sometimes these friends, these guardians of our trust play games, they betray our literary friendship with lines on which we can't rely. They take us into literary mazes turn characters we accept into those we mistrust, situations we know into something we can now only doubt. However, we still enjoy the journey; sometimes they make it so much fun there may be a happy ending. But often there isn't. I did say they were unreliable. Among their untrustworthy ranks are J M Barrie, George Eliot, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Nikolai Gogol, O Henry and Edgar Allan Poe.