I’m back to reading in the evenings after the luxury of my holiday where I could read all day if I wanted.

So, here is an update on my holiday reading.

Relentless - Simon Kernick

Happily married father of two receives a telephone call that will change his life for ever. A gripping thriller I read in one sitting. Ok it’s not classic fiction but it is a great page turner and the story holds your attention.

Contact Zero - David Wolstencroft

Someone is killing the new spies and their only escape is the mythical Contact Zero.

Written by someone who helped create the BBC series Spooks I was a little disappointed with this. It reads easily and isn’t bad - it’s just that it is no John Le Carre. Gripping? No. Inventive? Just.

Shutterbabe - Deborah Copaken Kogan

The story of a woman trying to break into photojournalism.

I have to say this was a disappointment. Having read Jon Steele’s book War Junkie and loved it I’d hoped for the same from this. What you get is something more close to Sex and the City. By the time she had been invited to join Magnum and turned it down I’m afraid she had lost me.

DC Confidential - Christopher Meyer

The story of our former American ambassador from his rise under Geoffrey Howe to working with the Blair Government and the aftermath of 9/11 and the Gulf War.

Very interesting and insightful. It explains how foreign policy works to the man in the street. My criticism would be the amount of time Meyer spends talking about the plight of his wife and her fight to gain access to her children despite the German governments best intentions to prevent this.

So, I managed some 1,500 pages and failed with one book that I had to bring home.

Agent Zigzag: The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman: Lover, Traitor, Hero, Spy - Ben Macintyre

Half way through and already an amazing and well researched true story of a wartime spy …