This small book is designed to help MRCP candidates who may have seen a relatively small number of clinical neurological cases and therefore “view the subject with trepidation”. It covers four areas, namely ‘grey’ cases, data interpretation, slide interpretation, and viva topics.

The clinical material is clearly set out and the illustrations, in particular, are instructive and well chosen. Likewise the data interpretation section succeeds in its aims of being informative and challenging. The other two sections are less impressive. The ‘grey’ cases, for example, are too clear cut, but probably the whole point of a ‘grey’ case is that the system which is primarily involved may not be immediately obvious, and therefore placing a grey case into a neurological text is somewhat self-defeating.

There are only five viva cases, on the topics of Guillain Barré syndrome, narcoleptic syndrome, status epilepticus, multiple sclerosis and stroke. This section is hardly comprehensive and therefore could have been excluded in favour of more data interpretation studies.

Overall this is a useful book for MRCP candidates, even though some of the subjects covered, such as striatonigral degeneration and narcolepsy, are unlikely to be MRCP topics. I would commend this book to candidates, in particular for the clinical slides and their interpretation.