What keeps you reading - absorbed, excited, fearfully tense - is its details of the plotting of the coup

Enormous and convincing detail, and a shattering climax

A super thriller . . . as instantly enthralling as The Day of the Jackal

There is no doubt about it. Frederick Forsyth can write spellbinders

The suspense mounts to a fine crescendo. A superior example of Goddard's velvet-cloaked menace

Robert Goddard's elegant prose and intelligence... place him in the company of such masters of historical suspense as John Fowles and Daphne du Maurier

Goddard is a master of the sly double and triple cross

A compulsive read ... ingenious and deftly-handled

It is certainly the best novel I've read so far this year, and should mark Zeh as one of Europe's brightest younger novelists

Interesting and original novel

Clever and gripping

Every chapter is taut, suspenseful, almost Hitchcock-esque. Zeh's style is fluent but also elegantly sparse... An absolute gem of a book.

From every angle - character study, philosophical discussion or straightforward plot - it shines with crystalline intensity, and so far as one can tell, nothing is lost in the translation. Complex and supremely elegant, this is a book to relish

This is a book and a half