We need Stanley Middleton to remind us what the novel is about. Holiday is vintage Middleton. The result of Mr Middleton's analysis is so satisfying that one has to look at nineteenth-century writing for comparable storytelling.

At first glance, or even at second, Stanley Middleton's world is easily recognizable... The excellence of art, for Middleton, is an exact vision of real things as they are. And because he is himself so exact an observer, his world at third glance can seem strange and disturbing or newly and brilliantly lit with colour

Middleton is a born writer; unpretentious, discerning, intelligent... He is the Chekhov of suburbia.

Middleton is concerned with what goes on below the surface of lives, what people feel, dream about, hope for, resent, fear - all the things that in real life may be kept hidden... Anyone coming to Middleton afresh has a real treat in store.

Genuinely affecting

The book is written in plain, terse, highly effective prose, with Cleaver's thoughts coming at the reader pell-mell. Parks maintains a firm grip on this stream of consciousness, so that the narrative imitates the impatient, darting, obsessive quality of Cleaver's mind but never descends to incoherence

Cleaver ranks with the finest of Parks's club-class malcontents. An ogre with charisma he compels as much as he repels.... this novel should be required reading for all who preach from a media pulpit. It shows the hunter hunted, the exposer exposed. And it inspires - as only fiction could - sympathy for the old devil

A highly stimulating novel...As a critic, Cleaver would approve of his creator

An exciting, accomplished new literary voice

A very funny satire-cum-thriller

Somewhere in mid-air between Waugh and Rushdie (with an shade of Catch 22 hovering near by) this tremendous novel makes a tragicomic weather all its own

Justly Booker longlisted last year, this debut is a dazzling one-off

Provocative and comic debut.

A true touch of originality ... showcases a promising new talent.

Dry, droll and insightful

Tissues are essential. You'll ricochet between delicately watering eyes at the romance of it all and howling sobs at the unbearable tenderness

I loved it

Sit back and enjoy the ride as the queen of the bonkbuster, Jilly Cooper, delivers another fabulously entertaining saga

Sharp, funny and touching

Gripping ... A compelling narrative, full of plots, murder, lust, fear, greed and corruption ... No writes is better at creating excitement over political theatre

The thrilling pace of the narrative does not let up from start to finish. Lustrum is an utterly engrossing, suspense-filled read

Dripping in detail it brings ancient Rome to vivid life, yet the political intrigue has echoes in today's ruling classes. And while the pace gallops along, the action is reined in just enough to crank the tension up. *****

Conspiracy, betrayal and political upheaval are the keys that turn this brilliantly researched page-turner

For a page turner...I would go for Lustrum (Hutchinson, £18.99) the second volume of Robert Harris's semi-fictional trilogy on the life of the Roman politician Cicero. The oldest stories really are often the best!

Harris is one of the consummate storytellers of the age, a master of narrative who - whatever genre he tackles - delivers books that are definitions of the word compulsive. In Lustrum, we have the mechanics of the thriller applied to ancient Rome, with immensely powerful results

A fine achievement: a hefty, politically serious thriller that effortlessly reanimates the dusty quarrels of Roman government while casting ironic and instructive sidelight on those of our own

Supreme story-telling

Deeply satisfying, impeccably researched and spectacularly topical ... a thriller to die for ... Harris brilliantly evokes Rome on the edge of political chaos through the eyes of Cicero's slave Tiro, who acts as his mater's secretary ... The pace never falters, and the politics are sharply relevant for today

Harris communicates such a strong sense of Imperial Rome - the book is awesomely well-informed about the minutiae of everyday life

Lustrum... was a fascinating world, a world of subtle political machinations and fine oratory and nuanced debate, and complex legislation, and intrigue, and an extremely absorbing one

It is a tribute to Harris's deftness of touch that this book feels so fresh ... he has a lovely dry, debunking style ... Harris writes about the life of politics with an insight rare among historical novelists ... It is as a pure thriller ... wry, clever, thoughtful, with a terrific sense of timing and eye for character

Lustrum offers a great insight into the psychology of political calculation. The story of Cicero's fall from power to the point where even sworn allies close their doors on him offers little consolation over the next few months for our own leader

What a storm it is. The five year period covered by the novel, the 'lustrum' of its title, has some claim to be the most thrilling in the entire span of classical history ... Remorseless it may be; but it is also, as one would expect of Harris, thrillingly paced and narrated. The excitements of a classic thriller, however, are almost the least of the novel's virtues: virtues which derive in large part, from Cicero himself. What grips most about Lustrum is the seriousness with which the political issues at stake are taken, and the vividness of the characterisation: both of which, in large part, reflect the closeness of Harris's reading of his hero's speeches and correspondence

Robert Harris brings the cut-throat republic to life... He understands politics and how to dramatise them.

Offers great insight into the psychology of political calculation

[Lustrum] stands on its own merits as a thoroughly engaging historical novel. Republican Rome, with all its grandeur and corruption, has rarely been made as vivid as it appears in Harris's book. The allure of power and the perils that attend it have seldom been so brilliantly anatomised in a thriller.

Harris never makes his comparisons between Rome and modern Britain explicit, but they are certainly there. And that's the principal charm of his ancient thrillers - their up-to-dateness.

Intrigue and excitement all the way, brilliantly read by Oliver Ford Davies.