Alex Berenson's third novel, The Silent Man, succeeds in seizing the attention from the start and never letting go until the end

An exciting story and a timely one ... Berenson squeezes every drop of suspense out of the approaching nuclear holocaust

Berenson's well-plotted and thoughtful third thriller to feature CIA agent John Wells ... Fast and furious ... this is a welcome addition to an excellent series

Tony Black is one of those excellent perpetrators of Scottish noir ... [he] is a compelling and convincing portrayer of raw emotions in a vicious milieu.

Black's book is the most personal one yet.

A brilliant, sweeping and heartbreaking novel, Black truly deserves your attention.

As washed-up private detectives go, Gus Dury is compelling - he's as hard as any criminal and twice as self-destructive.

Tony Black has written two of the finest crime novels to come out of the UK in the past twenty years and I'm willing to bet that in twenty years, Paying for It and Gutted will be on the top ten list of any crime list. But now comes Loss ... Phew-oh ... It's like having yer ass kicked and yer heart shrived simultaneously. What a privilege to watch a master writer achieve everything you'd hoped for and then some.

This is modern crime at its most brutal, its most affecting, its most honest and its most intelligent.

Tony Black's third novel Loss is another bleak investigation for his poignant Edinburgh washed up journalist turned involuntary private investigator Gus Dury. Black writes about urban blight and the curse of alcohol like no other, but his down at heel tales are also full of everyday humour. Harrowing but indispensable.

Tony Black is my favourite British crime writer and Gus Dury the genre's most interesting protagonist. Like his previous books, Loss has the power, style and street swagger that makes most of his contemporaries a little bland by comparison.

Most of the fiction books about Edinburgh are geared for the tourist but this is actually geared for the punter ... It really evokes the place ... In Gus Dury you have a very Edinburgh character. If Trainspotting's Begbie's younger brother had gone to university and become a journalist he might have been something like Gus Dury.