Crisis: the action-packed Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller

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A fluent Arabist, with a degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies, he was previously the BBC's Middle East Correspondent based in Cairo, and before that in Dubai. It is from the Frederick Forsyth school of thriller writing – a brilliantly fashioned, but unlikely tale – executed by an adrenaline-fuelled cast of characters.

What he uncovers not only puts his own life, and those close to him, at risk, but means that an entire nation is relying on his actions to discover the means and end of a highly-organised international plot against the UK. I haven't had that type of setting connection before when reading a novel, coming from New Zealand I haven't read many books which are set in New Zealand. This is a literary territory rather overpopulated at the moment, with swaggering 21st century pseudo-Bonds crawling out of the woodwork everywhere.

When action hero-by-numbers Luke meets a soldier ex-colleague and they exchange the type of lame homoerotic repartee beloved of the military. Drawing on his years of experience reporting on security matters, CRISIS is Frank Gardner's debut novel. If you like your spy thrillers more James Bond than George Smiley, you may enjoy it but I won’t be going back for a second helping of Luke Carlton. Crisis is the first non-fiction work by Frank Gardner, and as befits his day job of BBC Security Correspondent he has chosen a spy thriller as the genre for his debut novel. Another example of this comes later in the book, when we are supposed to believe that a pair of Colombian gangsters from the barrio would be able to navigate a make-shift mini-submarine with pin point accuracy, at night, through Force 5 seas to a tiny Cornish beach and arrive spot on time to make their rendezvous.

I really did enjoy the main character Luke, we didn't really get to uncover a hell of a lot about him. Frank Gardner has penned a great first novel that combines all the attributes of a riveting thriller.Villains make mistakes under no pressure, maybe because of ego, but again, given the plot, it leads to the reader somewhat guessing the consequence of the mistake. While we are obviously supposed to root for the success of the couple, halfway through she snogs a man who is such a cliche of arseholery (name of Hugo, Goldman Sachs banker, slick back hair etc etc) that she is clearly a dick.

Again, I understand that Gardner is trying hard to keep things within the bounds of the plausible, and ex-SBS officer Carlton fits that mold to a tee. After the bomb is contained and the explosives expert says of our stale hero, "Wow, whoever got the intel for this op must be one hell of a guy. The idea of a Colombian drug lord, incensed by successful, British lead attempts to curtail his business, scheming with the North Koreans to set off a nuclear dirty-bomb in the UK sounds like the stuff of a lesser Bond movie, and if the rest of Crisis was similarly fantastical it might have worked as a plot hook.But, that aside, most of what Gardner gives us defies belief, provides too much detail and not enough characterisation.