Wordsmithery

You need a methodical mind to plot a good thriller - and Peter Hanington, a former colleague still occasionally toiling at the BBC, has one of the best. He's previously been the planning engine of Today on Radio 4 (for longer than most have been able to stand the task) applying both invention and stamina to producing better and tastier sausages from the tired old news machine. 

He admits to using grids and flipcharts in setting the framework for his books, but they're hard to spot as a reader, with the narrative moving effortlessly between continents. There's a touch of W1A at the London end of operations, and late period LeCarre/McMafia as we travel abroad - no wonder there's tv/film interest.

So this summer, we get the third of his series, in A Cursed Place. Core characters have moved on slightly - our previous focus, veteran BBC reporter William Carver, is taking a break teaching journalism; radio news producer Patrick Reid finds himself in the middle of Hong Kong riots; and Jemima McCluskey is still ferreting away at BBC Monitoring, for threads and snags in the news nobody else spots.  There's a new female editor on Today (who seems A Good Egg), but John Brandon, the grandaddy of foreign correspondents, has moved on from Afghanistan to Dragon Cocktails in HK's poshest hotel bars, having radio pieces brought to him in kit-form for a little light tracking.  

The big baddies are a twisted couple running a global social media operation from Cupertino, California, who seek apparently benevolent partnerships with the BBC, as part of their policy of "doing well by doing good".  Come on, Peter - try to root these stories in reality, would you ?