Superbly researched, scarily plausible, and with a great narrative drive – A Kill in the Morning is a cracking counterfactual, and a terrific debut.

I loved A Kill in the Morning. It’s easily up there with Fatherland . . . It’s clever, intelligent, literate, action-filled and utterly compelling. What more could we ask for in any book?

A real page turner, and an insane read to boot – I mean that in the best possible way. Imagine a Fleming-esque assassin, only on steroids, and pitch him against the Nazis in a Cold War/Star Wars era where WWII ended in 1941, and this is what you get . . . a wonderful combination . . . a rollercoaster ride from beginning to end

Part Day of the Jackal, part James Bond . . . a wonderful page-turner with a plot that would make a great action movie . . . an action-packed romp that Ian Fleming would be proud of.

RECIPE for a great debut book: 1) Mix two parts of Brit 1950s war thriller; 2) add a chunk of Indiana Jones and a dollop of Dr Who; 3) thicken the plot with a devil-may-care killer and a demon Nazi and; 4) cook it on a steady-paced heat. A Kill in the Morning should be a bonkers read, but it's served up so well it delivers even more than its cover blurb promises - and that's plenty. Bloody good work, Mr Shimmin.

Compelling . . . a page-turning thriller with a twist of SF . . . enough guns and girls to keep things interesting. I very much enjoyed it

Crisp and enjoyable

The book is tremendous . . . a fascinating concept and Shimmin makes the most of it . . . A Kill in the Morning is a thriller and thrills is what you get . . . the action is crisp, well-written, and intense

A great mix of pure pulp entertainment. Shimmin has combined a slightly campy Bond style hero with a pulp ‘Commando’ comic style and a twist that you won’t see coming . . . great fun

Genius . . . an exciting rollercoaster of a novel . . . successfully weaves classic spy adventure fiction with superbly researched main characters and wonderful attention to historical detail . . . my favourite book of the year

Lucid, passionate, urgent

This is first class history and in a year swamped with First World War centenary books, it’s the one you should read first

A compelling and fascinating read...a shadowy assassin brought to life by an writer who gets to grips with a century of Balkan intrigue

A marvellously absorbing book... A triumph of research, it will appeal to the layman and historian alike

Extremely well written, taut and evocative... Despite its complex subject, Butcher makes this an easy and engaging read with his breezy style and fascinating encounters

Illuminating... Butcher achieves something remarkable with Princip. He promotes him quite plausibly from mad man to everyman; a warning to the future whom the future foolishly forgot

Arguably the most important story of the war

As a travel writer, Butcher takes some beating. He packs balls as well as ballpoints

A triumph of storytelling... [A] highly original gem of a book

Informative and powerful

A page-turning exploration of how the forgotten past continues to inform the present... Important, and relevant

[Princip’s] story as Butcher now tells it has a resonance far beyond the Balkans

Elegant, horrifying and enlightening… A book which is not only a good piece of detective work, it is the finest contribution so far this year to the rapidly expanding literature on the Great War

Tim Butcher has produced the most imaginative and singular book on the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War to date. It is a lot more than a study of Princip… It is a piece of expeditionary journalism, an investigation in time, place and spirit, of the highest order

A revealing insight into the mind and journey of the boy who escaped the narrow confines of his village, and whose political aspirations for his native country had such far-reaching effects on the world

Utterly absorbing… If journalism is the first draft of history, Butcher marries both disciplines with boldness and originality – as well as sympathy for his shadowy subject

Insightful and entertaining, this blows the cobwebs off the history of that day

Positive proof that fact can be as gripping as fiction…rich and timely… Amongst so many books published around the anniversary of the First World War, this one stands out

A fascinating investigation… An absorbing read

Despite its serious subject matter, the book is a rollicking read, full of amusing details and sarcastic humour

A brilliant and haunting journey through the Balkans

In the centenary year of the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, what better read than Tim Butcher’s The Trigger

[A] fascinating and lively history

Very complex – but you will grasp it

A fascination exploration

Highly readable but profoundly researched, The Trigger represents a bold exception to the deluge of First World War books devoted to mud, blood and poetry

a fascinating original portrait of a man and his country