link to latest post

Is there a way to link to the latest post in the same category as the current post. I currently use the_category to link to the category or categories that a post belongs to from all single post pages. What I want to be able to do is link to the latest post/posts in the came category/categories as well.

I can see that it can be done by running an extra query_posts, but I wondered if there was a more efficient solution (i.e. I am asking in case I have failed to understand a template tag or do not know of another function that can do it.).