I'd also recommend going to the archives at ChessCafe.com, and looking for two articles in Dan Heisman's Novice Nook column called "The Seeds of Tactical Destruction" and "More Seeds of Tactical Destruction".

Oh I see. I suppose (hope) it's even better now!

..and double threats!

Anyway, I have read a book by Weteschnik but it was named "Understanding Chess Tactics". It was a great book and helped me in a way to better 'understand' them. Worth the read imo. I was also reading it trying to solve myself the positions before reading the commentary, so it can also work as a workbook.

@Stigma Thanks. You're advice is well taken. It got me thinking that maybe programs might be better than books (which I have preferred up to now).

I have in mind though, something slightly different I think, and I certainly wasn't clear enough about it so I'll have another try.

In obvious cases where a pattern presents, or is "near" I can rely on my library of patterns, and the more cases I can move into this column the better. But sometimes there are tactics where I simply cannot see them at all immediately - not even their seeds. These are the kind of tactics where I might spend 15+ minutes just to find them (and another 10 to calculate out after). So, they are expensive, but viable, if you know what I mean. I presume the difficulty of these tactics will vary according to your playing strength.

So what I am trying to find is a way to know when it's a good bet to invest the time. Sometimes the position makes this obvious - say a lead in development + open lines - and I actually get a fair proportion of these, but in less obvious circumstances I leave (too) many on the table. I'm hoping that one or both of these books will be helpful for this purpose, or advice from chesspubbers of course.

There are (only) two tactics books that I know about that concern themselves with methods of recognizing tactics, apart from workbook types that focus on pattern recognition and recall. That would be Chess Tactics From Scratch (Weteschnik) and Chess Tactics Antenna (Neiman).

Would anybody care to comment on either or ideally compare them? Did they help?

My goal is to develop a better nose for tactical opportunities. I can sense them at moments of tension or if an obvious pattern appears, but it's sporadic and I'm sure that intuitive tacticians approach this quite differently (and with more success). I already use a number of workbooks for pattern recognition, and it helps, but not as much as the effort would suggest.