Plot: Set in Vietnam during the French occupation, the novel is narrated by Thomas Fowler, a middle-aged English journalist. The action circles around the murder of Alden Pyle "the Quiet American". He works for the Economic Aid Mission. At once innocent, naive and ignorant he believes religiously in the American way of democracy: as a result he is entangled in guerilla politics, backing the terrorist General The against the French. Pyle also falls for Fowler's girlfriend Phuong (Phoenix). He offers her the chance of marriage. Even though Fowler's distaste for Pyle intensifies, he finds himself dragged into the American's political conspiracies. A bomb explodes in a cafe causing injury and death. Fowler knows that Pyle was involved and, concluding that he must be stopped, betrays him. Pyle is killed with a rusty bayonet. The crime is investigated by Vigot, a vigilant detective familiar with Pascal. Phuong returns to Fowler. He cannot decide whether his act of betrayal was motivated by political necessity or personal malice.

Rock 'n' roll and the Suez crisis were just round the corner. But in the fading days of Britain's empire letters written by two of the country's best-known novelists show high society refused to let the old ways and the old days go peacefully.

Four Last Things by William Palmer Secker, pounds 12.99

A canvas notebook containing three apparently unpublished poems by Sir Stephen Spender is to go on sale at the end of this month.

It would never have happened in Smiley's day. Then, spies disgruntled and disaffected with the secret service that employed them fought back by selling secrets to the enemy. Treason, they called it. But it was all done away from the glare of publicity. Between friends who were enemies, and all that. In the eyes of those secretive establishment patriarchs, the Nineties strategy for the disaffected spy will seem an even greater betrayal. One sacked spy wants to take MI6 to the European Court of Human Rights with a claim for unfair dismissal.

! Konin: A Quest by Theo Richmond, Vintage pounds 8.99. The Jewish settlement at Konin, the town of Theo Richmond's ancestors, was among the first to be established in Poland during the Middle Ages. And in 1939 it became one of the first to receive the attentions of the invading Nazis, when in an appalling sweep the entire community was displaced and sent to perish in the camps. Only a few survived. This book is virtually a recreation of the place: streets, buildings, population carefully reassembled piece by piece from painstakingly researched records and living memory. It is an amazing act of obsessional homage, of mourning, even, but Richmond's sense of obligation to the past doesn't obscure the modern relevance.

Chief Music Critic of the Sunday Times for a quarter of a century, without any formal musical training, Desmond Shawe- Taylor belonged to a generation of hard-working and inspired amateurs who learnt their trade as they went along.

At 80, Arthur Miller puts a pail down his well and finds there's still lots of water there

Brian Moore's late fiction is anorexically insubstantial. By Christophe r Hawtree; The Statement by Brian Moore Bloomsbury, pounds 14.99

DAVID LISTER

From Mr Paul Newnham

mail-order junkie by Genevieve Fox

IN THE FIFTIES by Peter Vansittart, John Murray pounds 19.99

The 'Modern Review' has been shut down by its editor, Toby Young. Can't, says Julie Burchill, its founder. Media folk are taking sides in the mother of all postmodern battles. Phone-lines are hotting up. John Lyttle, a former contributor, fields the calls; Martin Rowson (also ex-MR) pour s oil on troubled waters