Michael Yates used to be a media personality; the best selling political biographies, the stint as a presenter on Newsnight, the cocaine habit. He even married the boss’s daughter – and all before he was 30. Lately life hasn’t been so kind. The drugs no longer work, Mrs Yates has decided she is a lesbian and Michael just doesn’t seem to be as, well, glib as he was before.

But then, mirabile dictu, the popular New Labour Prime Minister is assassinated and Michael finds himself in a journalistic heaven of conspiracies, coups and computer virus wars. He is in demand again. And obsessed with the flirty young anarchist, who for some reason, has just invited herself to stay in his spare room. A Sympathetic Hanging is a deftly written, bitingly satirical thriller set in a counter factual future that is nearer than we think.