Frighteningly plausible ... if you enjoy a spot of cold-blooded, raw, hard soldiering action you’ll be dead chuffed.

Gripped me from the start ... to me it read "for real"'

One of those writers who will be read a century from now.

Complex and intense ... page-turning tension.

When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le Carré ... they were a journey into the wider world ... These were the journeys that made me feel that I was not really cut off from the rest of humankind

One of those writers who will be read a century from now

He can communicate emotion, from sweating fear to despairing love, with terse and compassionate conviction

Return of the master . . . Having plumbed the devious depths of the Cold War, le Carré has done it again for our nasty new age

Stevens’s blazingly brilliant debut introduces a great new action heroine, Vanessa Michael Munroe, who doesn’t have to kick over a hornet’s nest to get attention, though her feral, take-no-prisoners attitude reflects the fire of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander….Thriller fans will eagerly await the sequel to this high-octane page-turner.

A heroine every bit as provocative as Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander.

Part Lisbeth Salander, part Jason Bourne, Munroe comes out swinging hard again. . . . A gritty, suspenseful novel.