THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE. By Philip Kerr. Quercus. $29.99

Reviewer: JEFF POPPLE

Complex, literary espionage fiction is currently back in vogue with a number of authors, on both sides of the Atlantic, breathing fresh life into the form. Jon Stock, Adam Brookes and Olen Steinhauer are just a few of this new breed of spy novelists and they have also been helped along by the success of television shows such as Homeland, The Americans and the recent adaption of John Le Carre's The Night Manager.

One of the most impressive new entrants into the murky world of spy fiction is American Chris Pavone. Pavone's first novel was the much acclaimed and awarded The Expats, about spying and deception in Luxembourg, and his latest novel, The Travelers, is a tour de force of surprises and suspense.

The book centres on a respected upmarket travel magazine and travel advisory service, known as The Travelers, which may also be a front for more nefarious activities. Will Rhodes, an award-winning correspondent for the magazine, has his life turned upside down when a momentary indiscretion while on assignment in Argentine leads to him being blackmailed.

From there the plot twists its way through a dazzling number of surprises, as the reader is kept uncertain as to what is really happening and who is working for whom. The tension steadily mounts and the book moves rapidly to an exciting climax in the wilds of Iceland.

Pavone skilfully maintains a good pace while also entertaining the reader with asides on tourism and living in New York, and he brings to mind respected authors of yesteryear, such as Le Carre and Len Deighton, in his ability to intertwine the professional with the personal, as the main characters struggle with the complexities of marriage and fidelity as much as they do with the dangers of international espionage. An outstanding novel.

Philip Kerr is best known for his series of historical thrillers about Bernie Gunther, a former policeman and private eye in Germany in the 1930s, who somehow manages to survive the horrors of the Second World War and its aftermath. In The Other Side Of Silence the series moves to 1956 and the Riviera, where a world-weary Gunther is working as a hotel concierge and living under a false name.

Tired of life, Gunther is shaken out of his miasma by the appearance of an old enemy, Harold Hennig,Spies a former captain in the Nazi security service. Soon Gunther finds himself trying to thwart Hennig's plans to blackmail the writer Somerset Maugham over a compromising photograph involving the British traitor Guy Burgess.

Although best known as a crime writer, Kerr skilfully enters the realm of the espionage novel and has produced another well plotted and atmospheric story that demands attention from beginning to end and confirms Gunther's status as one of the most intriguing characters in popular fiction. Highly recommended.

Jeff Popple is a regular reviewer.