Francis Wheen
Fictive Propaganda
War Without Frontiers
By Andrew Osmond
Hodder & Stoughton 598 pp £8.95 order from our bookshop
A Very British Coup
By Chris Mullin
Hodder & Stoughton 220pp £6.95 order from our bookshop
The political thriller has been perhaps the most successful fictional genre of the past decade, as Frederick Forsyth’s bank manager would doubtless testify. Yet very few politicians have tried their hands at it. A few years ago Brian Sedgemore, who was then still a Labour MP, wrote an indescribably bad book called Mr Secretary of State. But that hardly counted as a thriller; it read more like a copy of the Labour manifesto with a few love scenes hamfistedly chucked into it.
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