Engaging

Compelling

Well-crafted narrative... plenty of thrills, chills, ironies and surprises

Addictive

An extraordinary writer who brought literary lustre and lived insight to the spy yarn.

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

His Smiley novels are key to understanding the mid-20th century.

What Joseph Conrad started, John le Carré enshrined and made modern. That is the real achievement of his great novels and why they will endure ... we should see him as our contemporary Dickens.

Brilliant. Realistic. Constant suspense

Intelligent, thrilling, surprising ... makes most cloak-and-dagger stuff taste of cardboard

The central character in this standalone novel is (on first impression) an unpleasant, manipulative piece of work, and it is a measure of the author's skill that we find ourselves thoroughly on his side... It's no surprise that a successful film has already been made of the novel (the first of his books Nesbo has allowed to be filmed), as the cinematic quality of Headhunters makes it a particularly invigorating read...a sizeable measure of sheer entertainment is on offer. Nesboites might like the change of pace

Norwegian Jo Nesbo, lauded as the new Stieg Larsson, delivered the goods in The Leopard and The Snowman, and in Headhunters serves up a new hero...more plot twists than a country house garden maze... An accomplished novel

I am the world's greatest living crime writer. [Jo Nesbo] is a man who is snapping at my heels like a rabid pit bull poised to take over my mantle when I dramatically pre-decease him

Stellar stand-alone caper... The dizzying reversals of fortune and situations that would be over-the-top in lesser hands make for a delightful roller-coaster ride. Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard fans will be delighted

A darkly funny and cleverly plotted tale of greed which will further Nesbo's reputation

Headhunters is a stand-alone thriller, but just as well executed as his regular police procedurals...Written in the Norwegian author's typical no-nonsense prose, and plotted with precision to create a relentless and breakneck tale that keeps the reader hungrily turning the pages for more.

He keeps the twists and shocks coming hard and fast before dumping us, breathless, into a head-scratchingly neat conclusion... an intriguing foray into the mind of a man you'd hope never to meet

The reader is glued to the pages like gum to the street.... Nesbo has accomplished an easily digested, but nevertheless brilliant and elegant thriller

Nesbo is a master storyteller, gripping the reader from the first page and rachetingup the suspense in a thrilling finale with several satisfying twists.

With echoes of The Thomas Crown Affair, spectacular storytelling and a beautifully judged super-twist, it confirms Nesbo's place at the pinnacle of thriller writers and, inevitably, a film version will be with us next year. It's that good.

Harris is a master of pace an entertainment, and The Fear Index is a thoroughly enjoyable book . . . Read the book. If I die tomorrow, blame the computer.

Like all Harris's books, this one is readily enjoyable as a suspense story . . . But what makes Harris's thrillers so much more rewarding than those of his rivals is that they all, whatever their ostensible subject, come out of his deep and expert interest in politics, broadly conceived - which is to say, in power, in how power is taken, held and lost; how some people are able to dominate others; how wealth and status, fear and greed, work . . .The Fear Index (which has a lot to say about the very rich - a group to which Harris himself now belongs but doesn't like) is ultimately a study in the total lack of morality of those who manipulate the markets . . . By focusing thus on a rogue algorithm and a pure scientist, Harris is not really fronting up the true authors of our current financial plight, perhaps. But, in its own carefully conceived terms, The Fear Index is certainly another winner.

This latest nail-biter from the author of The Ghost will keep fans of suspense up all night.

To crawl by bus through rush-hour traffic is not something that would normally appeal to a busy person. Unless, like me, that person was in possession of Robert Harris's new thriller The Fear Index. Then they would certainly relish the potential for escapism such a slow journey could provide and there was nowhere else I wanted to be then in that story, which delivers pure pleasure with every page.

Harris is a master of pace and entertainment, and The Fear Index is a thoroughly enjoyable book . . . Read the book.

The Fear Index is an escapist thriller to rank with the best of them, and as a guide to what hedge funds actually do, it is surprisingly clear and instructive.

There are moments when this book feels so up to date it could have been written next week... spookily exciting.

Perhaps the greatest thriller writer around, Harris has delivered his best work yet. A modern classic.

Mock-gothic variant on Frankenstein relates what happens when a computer programme goes rogue and ravages the money market. Suspense and satire combine in a book that is as up to the minute as a news flash.

If you didn’t catch it in hardback, grab it now in austerity-Britain paperback. Harris’s latest bestseller is a gripping, funny and timely tale of money – losing it or, more terrifyingly here, making too much of it… A high-speed plot, deft characterisation… and Harris even manages to explain what a hedge fund is.

Populist fiction at its best.

I would recommend The Fear Index. The writing is as elegant as ever.

Harris writes with a deceptively languid elegance, so that the novel straddles not only the crime and sci-fi genres but also that of literary fiction. A satisfying read on a number of levels, it is strongest as a character study of a man who discovers, pace Hemingway, the true meaning of the phrase "grace under pressure".

The Fear Index is a frightening book, of course, as, with its title, it intends. Harris has an excellent sense of pace, and understands as much about fear in literature as Hoffman does in markets.

Like Frankenstein, his novel is a tale of the catastrophic consequences of galvanising inanimate matter into uncontrollable life . . . The Fear Index is both cutting edge and keenly conscious of its literary predecessors. Reworking classic texts is a large-scale literary industry these days. Harris's tongue-in-cheek flesh-creeper (whose most chilling moments are its reminders of our present financial woes) is a virtuoso specimen of it.

Harris is a master of pace and entertainment, and The Fear Index is a thoroughly enjoyable book . . . Read the book. If I die tomorrow, blame the computer.

A nail-biting listen - the financial world has never seemed so thrilling - beautifully read by Phillip Franks

There is a cool edge to Franks' voice as he tracks Alex's surging paranoia to a blockbuster climax