Poison, Shadow and Farewell, By Javier Marías

From the appearance of his Oxford intrigue All Souls – as if Proust had redrafted Morse – fans of Marías have saluted the Spanish novelist as a peerless talent. This final part of an astonishing trilogy confirms his Your Face Tomorrrow sequence – translated with supreme skill by Margaret Jull Costa - as one of the most original achievements in recent fiction.

Baroque, beguiling, at home in the twilight zones of love and politics alike, these deviously epic yarns of espionage and secrecy lift the spying game to metaphysical heights, and plunge it into psychological depths.

Beyond the mesmeric prose, his reluctant agent Jacques Deza - in London again - must in this final mystery embrace the legacy of Spain's civil war, and the Third Reich itself.