'Cracking East-meets-West thriller introducing a half-Thai, half-American cop whose Buddhist beliefs are as important as his forensic skills. Terrific'

'A stunning thriller! Bangkok 8 is suspense at its best: a masterfully written tale set in a world that's perfectly evoked and populated with compelling, flesh and blood characters'

'Bangkok 8 is one of the most startling and provocative mysteries that I've read in years. The characters are marvellously unique, the setting is intoxication and the plot unwinds in dark illusory strands, reminiscent of Gorky Park. Once I started, I didn't put it down'

'Read this book, savor the language - it's the last and the most compelling word in thrillers'

'John Burdett infuses the plot with enough suspense, detail and dry Asian insight to keep readers rapt as the story careens about the bars and brothels of Thailand, taking in its flesh trade and cut-rate plastic surgery parlours and ending in a climax with a fittingly Buddhist twist. Bangkok 8 is highly recommended'

'The real star is Bangkok, a city in mutation, capital of sex and gender surgery, against whose lurid foreground most characters appear puny. It's a strangely tender, Utopian vision...that combines SF clarity with something more fluid, as non-negotiable and irrational as a dream'

'Quirky, talky and highly entertaining... But all this smart talk does not diminish the overwhelming presence of the sprawling, chaotic, illogical city with its jampacked bars and impassable streets, that invigorates this remarkable novel and makes it something to enjoy for its sheer bravado'

'It is not unusual for the Western detective story to be transported into Far Eastern surroundings. But it is the rare novel that offers a seductive and engaging local protagonist of such a story, penned by an Easterner. This does both with resounding success, as well as adding a dimension not typically found in the genre'

'Impeccably researched, this is sometimes poetic, often exotic and totally hardcore'

'Wow! Partly 'normal' thriller and partly off-the-beaten-track Buddhist narrative ... An original and gripping novel'

'John Burdett is purely and simply a wonderful writer, a genuine grown-up at work in a genre mostly populated by arrested adolescents...Bangkok 8 is a tour de force'

'To say that Bangkok 8 in set in Bangkok is an understatement: it is suffused with the cooking smells, mired in the traffic jams and entangled in the bare limbs of the sex workers... not that the novel is slow going. Bangkok 8 goes from 0 to 60 in about 10 pages'

'Like a modern-day Indiana Jones adventure written by Evelyn Waugh...One of this season's cleverest and most stylish entertainments'

This is a tense, elegant, psychological thriller about an emotional tug-of-war... This tale of self-willing entrapment keeps us guessing to the end... Compelling and memorable.

Hooper has constructed a modern fairy tale of a kind, complete with Bluebeard and his castle, and using some of the fictional paraphernalia of Gothic horror and melodrama she delivers a compelling, at times disturbing, but always humorous and readable cautionary tale.

The difficulty with a thriller - even if it is literary - is not to fall into cliche and predictability. At the points where it seems as this may happen, Hooper wrong foots the reader without losing any credibility, leading to a very clever ending.

This beautifully crafted psychological thriller really got under my skin.

Hooper is a very clever writer. Her prose is uncluttered, but every phrase is packed with meaning.

A chilling, compulsive read.

New, dark literary thriller...read it for its seductive plot.

A dark unsettling read which will appeal to fans of the gothic as well as those who enjoy tales of twisted relationships such as Gone Girl.

Literary thriller The Engagement by Chloe Hooper takes a Fifty-shades style plot about erotic games between estate agent Liesel and business man Alexander to a darker place.

Part gothic novel, part thriller, this will keep you guessing until the end.

Hooper has crafted a terrific tale full of dark corners and dead-ends that leave the reader wondering what to believe. The result is a collision between a psychological thriller and a very dark romance that has something for fans of either genre.

The Engagement has all the ingredients of a top psychological thriller with the bonus of literary style. I think it could be a huge hit. I hope so. I really want to see the film…

Beautifully crafted and sleek psychological thriller… The Engagement, by one of Australia’s newest and brightest writers, explores mind control, power games and emotional abuse, so do not expect it to be a romance novel as it is, most definitely, not!

An unsettling thriller... A book which deftly explores the power of money and property, romance and sex

A dark, erotic and tense tale

Plain and lucid, with beautifully accurate word-choice, and plenty of grace-notes that one pauses to appreciate... A highly intelligent, unpredictable, very grown-up, and crazily readable novel

A sleek and sly two-hander, a thriller almost, that sets everything out clearly for the reader and yet remains filled with uncertainty

An intense psychological thriller, strewn with enough red herrings to satisfy the most demanding reader

Hooper's writing is singularly challenging and confrontational... For those who prefer their erotic literature less Fifty Shades of Grey, more Jane Eyre

A fine, literary thriller; cold, at times almost nauseatingly disturbing

A fascinating, subtle, really original modern Gothic thriller