Poor old John le Carre. He had a niche which he did really well - cold war spy scenarios - and which I reread again and again, still stunned by the attention to detail and the word pictures he could build up of the situation. A Small Town in Germany is still, I think, the best, although of course the Smiley books were absolutely brilliant.

But now he's floundering around looking for a new genre. None of his post cold war novels have really grabbed me. The Little Drummer Girl came and went, quality-wise, and The Tailor of Panama was downright boring IMHO.

Another author of that ilk, and who has had his most famous book filmed, is Martin Cruz Smith. The Renko trilogy (which has, of course, become a quadlogy) were absolutely brilliant, a Soviet-era policeman stumbling through life in an amazingly believable welter of competence, incompetence, blind luck and sheer bloodymindedness. Smith is another author who doesn't do so well outside of his normal milieu; Gypsy in Amber was laboured by comparison with Gorky Park or Red Square. Red Square would film well, although I think they'd have to alter Polar Star quite considerably to make it "fly" as a film.

Sorry. Rambling rather than working. Software testing is NOT fun ...