"As good as Le Carré."-Dick Adler,
Chicago Tribune "Uncommonly smart and engrossing . . . If you yearn for stylish, sophisticated, suspenseful fiction, you need look no further."-
The Washington Post "Le Carré/Furst territory . . . Unforgettable."-
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Anyone with an appreciation for the details of the Cold War has to marvel at a book that features Scotland Yard, Nikita Krushchev, Guy Burgess, and a money-laundering scheme centered on Swedish modernist furniture."-
Entertainment Weekly "A smart, well-crafted, very British book, and Troy is a shrewd and irreverent policeman.. . . . If Troy is the character at the heart of this novel, its soul is England as it was during the Cold War years, a country fueled by paranoia and espionage, overrun with agents and counter-agents, caught up, as Troy says, in 'an age that specialized in thinking the unthinkable.'"-
USA Today "Lawton, who has a delightful way with metaphor, sprinkles his yarn with a variety of names that have long lain dormant in our American memories. . . . Winston Churchill makes a priceless appearance. . . . Troy is exquisitely drawn. He's a cynic at heart not because of any dour view of humanity, but because he's not at home in Britain or the Soviet Union."--
The Boston Globe "Some books are at least as important to life as eating. . . . Old Flames is a book that I would forgo eating to read again. . . . Convoluted without being complicated and fast paced while remaining completely believable, Old Flames is the consummate novel about the Cold War."--
The Rocky Mountain News "Mesmerizing. . . . Dryly funny, smartly written, slightly macabre and richly evocative of its Cold War setting. Lawton's got a knack for nuanced character." --
The Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer "A rich mixture of political intrigue and old-fashioned mayhem. . . . Tangled webs of deceit are standard in mysteries, but British author John Lawton takes the idea to nearly Shakespearean heights."--
Baltimore Sun "Scorchingly clever. . . . An intriguing synthesis of genres. . . . Part Len Deighton, part John le Carré, part P.D. James, and all original. Lawton paints a vivid background of time and place, populates it with unusual and interesting people . . . and entangles them in a deliciously intricate game of life, death, betrayals and lies, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. The result is a ripping good read that celebrates two 20th-century British literary traditions propelling them into the 21st century."--
CNN.com "[A] complex, evocative tale. . . . Lawton has created an effective genre-bending novel that is at once a cerebral thriller and an uproarious, deliciously English spoof."--
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A splash of Greene, a twist of Deighton, a small measure of history--Lawton has produced a thrilling cocktail. . . . The cast of characters--both borrowed and invented--is as rich, rounded and eccentrically plausible as any in recent thriller fiction. Great stuff."--
The Times (London)
"An early candidate for Thumping Good Thriller of the Year . . . No angst, no darkness, just the joy of a plot racing along in overdrive."--
Time Out (London)
The second Sergeant Troy novel - 'stylish, sophisticated, suspenseful' Washington Post