Our Game, by John le Carre (Coronet, £5.99 in UK)

Spying may have gone out of fashion, but spy thrillers never will, it seems at least as long as the master himself stays in the fiction business. Forget George Smiley and his shades of grey tradecraft, for Our Games plunges with unaccustomed gusto into the colourful, bloody inter ethnic conflicts of the Caucasus when its anti hero, an unemployed double agent called Larry Pettifer, becomes a born again Ingush freedom fighter. Only the narrator, one Tim Cranmer, retains anything like, pre glasnost levels of le Carrean languid cool; but even he succumbs to the raging passions of the new world order in this immaculately structured quest novel which, while it may not keep you guessing to the very end, at least answers most of your questions when you get there.