A phrase hardly used in Daniel Fesperman's The Warlord's Son is the traditional description of intrigue on the North-west Frontier"The Great Game". This is not because many of the characters in this timely thriller about real-world politics don't see it as a game, so much as because only a moral idiot could share their perception. The stakes are too high, for one thing; this is a game in which you betray an adversary just for the finesse of the move, and yet betrayal … mehris liable to turn deadly for both victim and traitor. American journalist Kelly is sick at heart even before he finds himself on the Afghan border, and his interpreter Najeeb tried to walk out on being used years earlier. Both of them are the prisoners of their history. Kelly has his ideal of professionalism to stick to though and Najeeb has a version of loyalty entirely at odds with the honour he learned from his murderous, drug-dealing, back-stabbing father. Both men are dragged into a vicious universe where the romantic love between Najeeb and his upper-class modernising girlfriend Daliya is a genuinely subversive force--this is an exciting book not only because of its fast-paced action, but also because it takes place at the frontier of world-views and passionate caring. --Roz Kaveney weniger