Don't start reading these books unless you are confident that you can handle addiction

The real queen of crime

Margery Allingham has worked her way up to a worthy place among the tiny hierarchy of front-rankers in the detective world

Spending an evening with Campion is one of life's pure pleasures

Miss Allingham's strength lies in the power of her characterization

Edney Silvestre’s plot is agile and engrossing, replete with references to Brazil and the world’s cultural and political moment.

A minutely detailed examination of the political, social and psychological connotations of a murder.

In his first novel, Silvestre combines lyricism with historical documentation.

The descriptions of Venice and Venetian life are beautifully written and acutely observed … The author clearly has an excellent understanding of the Italian psyche and a profound knowledge of Venice and Venetian life. This is the 22nd book in Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti series and I can’t wait for the 23rd.

John le Carré takes us back to his favourite scenarios: Whitehall, the secret services, the gentleman's clubs, dodgy bankers, corrupt public schoolboys and gruesome American neo-cons . . . revelling once more in that imaginary world of secrets and lies that is le Carré's gift to us

Tense, twisty, and driven by a melancholy insight into human motivation . . . deeply compelling

John le Carré is as recognisable a writer as Dickens or Austen, with an often-imitated but never rivalled cast of seedy spies, false lovers, public schoolboys struggling with guilt, and charming but immoral leaders of the brutal establishment . . . This is vintage le Carré and highly enjoyable

Thrilling, suspenseful . . . Fans will not be disappointed

Utterly convincing characters, a tight plot . . . Wonderful

Thrilling

Choreographed with unsettling precision

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

Plunges the reader into a modern-day thriller...Dad won't be able to put it down

[It] has all the essential ingredients of his masterpieces: the dilemmas of duty, patriotism and decency

John Le Carré at his masterful best . . . nobody does it better

Widely hailed as a return to the good old Smiley days . . . le Carré writes with laconic elegance