Powerful and disturbing...a tour de force

To call The Innocent a spy novel would be like calling Lord of the Flies a boy's adventure yarn...it ensure McEwan's major status

The sheer cleverness of the book is dazzling, and only fully to be appreciated as you turn the last page

It's the most tightly plotted of Ian McEwan's novels, and to argue properly for its excellence would involve showing how the political and emotional themes are inseparable from its narrative ingenuity, the patterns of revelation and about-turn which mark its final pages

Generous in scale, simple in its hideous impact... Ironically, he has celebrated the obsequies of the East-West spy thriller by writing one of the subtlest

Deft, taut fiction... Many English writers have been compared to Evelyn Waugh, often wrongly, but this book can stand with the master's best

The plot crackles like thin ice with dread and suspense

So exhaustively suspenseful that it should be devoured at one sitting... McEwan fuses a spy-novel plot with themes as venerable as the myth of Adam and Eve

Never less than wholly entertaining

Has the spooky, crooked-angled, danger-around-every-corner feeling of a Carol Reid film. It reminded me often of The Third Man and that is no mean feat

Page turning, twisty and gripping . Characters that you really care about and that are raw and real. A great read!

Utterly gripping!

'Stylish, intense and brilliantly twisty. This is a terrific summer thriller.'

'I loved The Dive - a twisty, gripping, unputdownable thriller set in a stunning but sinister location.'

'Imagine Lucy Foley's The Guest List transported to a pristine tropical island occupied by travellers, where everyone is running away from something, and nothing and no-one is quite as it seems. The claustrophobic world of beach-bums, influencers and long-term ex-pats, each with their own agenda, is the perfect environment for a fast-paced closed-room thriller that demands to be read in one sitting - prepare to be submerged from the first page and not resurface until that unsettling final line.'

'Reading The Dive gave me the same wanderlust chills I got when I first read The Beach - Sara Ochs' stunning debut combines an exotic location to die for (literally), a host of itinerant characters with multiple secrets to hide and plenty of locked-room thrills. This is one sun-soaked, escapist thriller you won't want to miss!'

'A perfect debut thriller. The definition of an up-all-night page-turner.'

Dive in - a perfect sunlounger read.

This breathless thriller keeps you hooked.

A strikingly assured and accomplished debut. Sara Ochs clearly has a fine understanding of the conventions and possibilities of the psychological thriller. She has devised an intricate and satisfying puzzle here.

Set on a beautiful Thai island, danger is always lurking just below the surface in this brilliantly thrilling murder mystery.

A ripping tale that neither shies away from big questions nor interesting answers