Written by John Le Carre
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Those who have followed le Carré's remarkable progress as writer (from the lean and brilliantly-plotted The Spy Who Came in from the Cold onwards) will be aware that the end of the Cold War gave the author no pause at all; while other espionage writers were floundering around for a subject, le Carré was able to deal with the dangerous realities of the modern world in precisely the same compulsive way he had always done. If some of the recent novels have, nevertheless, not had quite the elegant and commanding power of his best work, it's refreshing to welcome this new book as one of his most assured in years.

A corporate lawyer is brutally killed on a hillside in Turkey, and the reader is transported into a disparate but compelling series of events, taking us from a Devon seaside resort through the lethal world of the Russian Mafiosi to a tense climax in the High Caucasus. Of course, for le Carré character is every bit as important as plot: his protagonist, concealing his past security work by working as a children's magician, has failings as a father (which match the problems he had with his own father). In terms of the narrative, as so often before, the author has us at his command from the very first page.