A nightmare vision of emotional instability and insanity... If Van Gogh or Munch had been novelists, or Strindberg a painter, they would have created similar mental landscapes... A work of fiction whose hold on the intellect is as strong as its grip on the senses: that sounds, looks, tastes and smells like a minor masterpiece

Brilliant... A Cruel Madness brings to mind other novels set in the microcosmic world of a hospital, Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

With terrifying vividness, Mr Thubron creates a phantasmagoric world

A quietly extraordinary tour de force

Colin Thubron conjures up, within a tight narrative, a whole persuasive world - not just the physical setting of the hospital, but the tortuous and paradoxical internal world of the warped mind

A nonstop rampage of intrigue, mayhem, lunacy and dark-dark-dark humour

Only one's dreams after a champagne-fuelled night at the Follies Bergere have quite the same nightmarish-but-entertaining quality as Vargas's delightful crime novels

Gripping

[Vargas is] one of the most exciting, addictive and inventive purveyor of classy crime fiction currently pounding the publishing beat... It it a highly entertaining policier but more importantly, as with Conan Doyle, the wacky world Vargas shapes is oddly reassuring: a great remedy to a grey day

A thrilling read

A beguiling story

A sinister, beguiling tale that brilliantly evokes a childhood world

Brilliant and nightmarish, this modern fairytale is beautifully written

Phantom will maintain Jo Nesbo’s unstoppable momentum.

The king of Nordic crime – and his haunted protagonist Harry Hole – returns with this tightly plotted thriller which pitches Hole deep into the murky underworld of Oslo’s heroin market.

Jo Nesbo is at the top of his game... The must-read thriller of 2012.

Phantom leaves us reeling, with a storyline and ending that hurts us almost as much as it hurts the protagonists... The twists and turns show Nesbo at his complicated, yet utterly accessible best, and Hole at his undeniably brilliant but self-destructive worst.

Jo Nesbo is a master of his craft. His latest novel, Phantom, is world-class crime writing. Phantom is a crime novel that pleases on every level.

Harry Hole is back only to find that the case he wants to investigate is already closed

Jo Nesbo has done it again with Phantom, his seventh gripping novel featuring Inspector Harry Hole... Tense and compulsive Phantom will have you jumping out of your seat

King of Scandinavian crime... A writer at the top of his game

Riveting reading from page one