The December 2004 issue of PC World magazine contains an article Poor Defenders which compares free vs. fee spyware-removal applications. Also, finally this is a review mentioning the dubious scare tactics of some removal tools.

Also, if you speak German, issue 23/2004 of German computer magazine c't is worth a recommendation. One of its featured topics is spyware (keyloggers in special), including a six page tutorial for manual detection and removal by Patrick Kolla (sorry for this surreptitious advertising ;) ).