The Dying Light Henry Porter (Orion, £7.99) We’re on familiar ground here, with a Big Brother state squashing opposition with spooky surveillance technology. But this is only a short way into the future. A new Prime Minister has just replaced two earlier versions — the first so dangerously casual that Cabinet members only realised what decisions had been taken when they read the papers next day. His successor was prone to childish tantrums.

Big business has infiltrated huge sections of the Civil Service and sold sinister anti-terrorist systems to the Government. Our heroine, Kate Lockhart, unexpectedly inherits the estate of David Eyam, a former lover at Oxford — as well as the resistance movement he created to fight the attacks on civil liberties. Porter, a political journalist, keeps the cliff-hangers coming so realistically that the reader suspends disbelief, even while gasping at the ludicrous plot. It’s a thriller, but one that sticks in the mind. As he intends, it makes you wonder why we have accepted the growth of CCTV and other attacks on our liberty.

The End of the Party: The Rise and Fall of New Labour Andrew Rawnsley (Penguin, £12.99) Reviews of the hardback version said this ‘reads like a thriller’ and so it does — the plot seems unbelievable. The paperback has been updated with two new chapters on the General Election and its aftermath.