Great talent, great imagination, and real been-there done-that authenticity make this one of the year's best thriller debuts. Highly recommended. -- LEE CHILD Dunn, a former M16 officer, fashions a hero who looks poised to give Lee Child's Jack Reacher a run for his readers ... a twisty, cleverly crafted work. KIRKUS REVIEWS (USA) A nail-biting, edge of your seat page-turner. Matthew Dunn is an explosive new talent. -- SIMON KERNICK A terrific thriller with a superb new hero. Written by a man with the credentials to back him up. Spartan oozes class. Bond and Bourne can take a back seat... -- MATT HILTON Plenty of fireworks, a suitably anguished 21st-century hero and snappy tradecraft make this an intelligent and entertaining summer read. But what really gives Spartan the edge is the author: Matthew Dunn is a highly commended former MI6 field operative ... and the first to write a thriller. This feels solid and authentic. -- Adam LeBor FINANCIAL TIMES Excellent ... I know of no other spy thriller that so successfully blends the fascinating nuances of the business of espionage and intelligence work with full-throttle suspense storytelling. -- JEFFREY DEAVER Readers will want to see more of Dunn's distinctive hero, "the ultimate killer of killers." PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (US) This debut novel has the ring of verisimilitude ... no nonsense, pulse-pounding ... readers will want to spend more time in the company of Matthew Dunn's tough agent Will Cochrane CRIMETIME I made the mistake of starting Dunn's novel at 10 o'clock last evening. In no time flat my mind was trapped by the turns of this intense thriller ... this is one of the most startling thriller debuts I've encountered. THE RAP SHEET A thriller with fast action, a great villain, several twists and turns, and enough ambiguity to escape the many obvious pitfalls of genre cliche ... the book pushes forward relentlessly. IRRISTIBLE TARGETS As a thriller, Spartan has pace and style ... Like le Carre and Fleming before him Dunn is the real thing, a former member of SIS turned fictional chronicler of the secret world. His though, is a more muscular creation than Smiley, or even Bond. Meet Will Cochrane, a one man weapon of mass destruction; 007 is a cocktail-sipping lush compared with Cochrane. DAILY TELEGRAPH