Making Enemies [signed] [first edition]

Making Enemies is the first volume in Francis Bennett's Cold War trilogy which is being reissued in Faber Finds. It centres around the race for the hydrogen bomb in 1947, a deadly global game of institutionalized deceit and lies in which human life is the cheapest commodity of all. Brilliantly evoking the paranoid and mutual mistrust of those early days of the Cold War this novel was widely acclaimed on first publication. One critic said, 'Le Carre could not have done it better.' For Michael Hartland is was the thriller of the year. The best, longest and most considered review was by Phillip Knightley (author of The Second Oldest Profession: Spies and Spying in the Twentieth Century) who said variously 'only a novelist could explain what it what like to live for so many years in the shadow of nuclear annihilation; ... Yet it is more than the intelligent reader's spy thriller and comparisons with other spy writers do not do it justice; ... Like all the best historical novels, the authenticity of background and time lend the story added credibility. I have never read the relationship between an intelligence officer and his pawn described so well ... It is hard to find fault with this debut novel. The writing is first class, the characters are all believable and the main theme of the book is engrossing.'