A remarkable book by the master. Reading it is a great experience

A compelling tale of deceit, dialogue and the author's own despair . . . This is a story with frenzy at its heart

John le Carré's bullet train of a new thriller is part vintage John le Carré and part Alfred Hitchcock . . . The author's most thrilling thriller in years

If you want to know about the state of Britain today, forget the Booker shortlist. Just read John le Carré's latest thriller

Few recent plays have had dialogue as good, and few recent literary novels can boast a set of characters so vividly imagined. Our Kind of Traitor is a teasing, beguiling, masterly performance

A compelling tale of deceit, dialogue and the author's own despair John le Carré's greatest gift may be his ear, which allows him to pick up a tremor of fear in the softest voice or a false note in any exchange of words and play with them to his heart's content. He can therefore create, in dialogue, a trembling soundscape that has a pitch-perfect quality

Chilling and astute . . . In Our Kind of Traitor, there is not a hair out of place . . . le Carré has done it again for our nasty new age

I really enjoyed it and loved the central character of Detective Catrin Price and closed the book wanting to read more of her in future books.

The narrative has a convincing air when dealing with Cardiff, the forensic background, rock music and, above all, pharmacological details.

An author of consistently engaging and clever bestsellers, Kennedy has ranged from Stateside dramas to noirish thrillers. The Moment pulls together both strains in his fiction, marrying romantic tragedy with Le Carre-style espionage. The novel's set pieces are robustly staged and Kennedy turns the plot on its axis several times. The sadness at the heart of the novel is what makes it more than just an evocative recreation of an interesting time and place.

5 stars