Spoken Word
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by Robert Harris
Random House, 6hrs, pounds 11.99
Since the spies came in from the cold, stories featuring KGB agents and Russian skullduggery have felt distinctly passe, and it was an effort to start listening to Robert Harris's . But Harris is such a master of both construction and suspense that it wasn't long before I became completely engrossed in this strange story. British historian Fluke Kelso finds himself with the scoop of a lifetime when an ex-bodyguard of Stalin turns up at a Moscow conference to criticise his version of Russian history. A hair-raising hunt for a mysterious notebook stolen from Stalin's safe just after his death ensues; what happens when its secret is revealed elicits a sobering comment on the Russia of today.
Classic John Buchan Stories
CSA, c 3hrs, pounds 8.99
If you though John Buchan was just a writer of tweedy Scottish "shockers", as he called his first Hannay story, The Thirty-Nine Steps, you've been missing all manner of delights. Classic John Buchan Stories is the perfect introduction to his wider canon, giving the flavour of his historical novels as well as his political tales and his more subtle stories of human frailties. There couldn't have been a better choice of voice than the meltingly masculine tones of Iain Cuthbertson. A Scot by birth, he is adept at both the lazy accents of the laird and the broader lilt of the men of the people. But he can also do the clipped, upper-class English of the 1920s to perfection.
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