Sutler races along but has depth too, in its characters and filmic description of landscape...As for the enhancements … while I loved the short films of Cuba, Istanbul and Reims Cathedral that cropped up every few chapters, their effect was more to make me yearn for a holiday than add anything to the story.

For example, listening to the phone messages left by one character's mother as she tries to cajole him into contacting her, before she understands that he is in danger, adds an emotional jolt to the text.

Pullinger judged that the first two parts, Sutler and The Massive, "provide a wholly original view of our involvement in the Iraq conflict", but was less convinced by the third, The Kill, saying, "House has a great ability to create vivid characters, and the novel teems with them.

He added that it is, "a hugely convoluted work in which dozens of characters execute a dance that has obviously been minutely choreographed, although one that to the reader increasingly seems to appear dizzyingly random.

The House method of storytelling is to create brilliantly realised characters, focus on them for a brief, intense period, and then abandon them, often leaving their fates obscure".

The Kills is a page-turner, but the pages turn back as much as forwards, as you chase up echoes and repetitions – long-forgotten names and places, but also wasps, the smell of jasmine, the gesture of pulling a handbag strap over a shoulder – that might be clues, might be red herrings, might be the product of my own fevered mind.