Can the Fox outrun his hunters?

THE FOX by Frederick Forsyth (Bantam £20, 320 pp)

THE master of the modern espionage novel returns and, in his first book for five years, Forsyth has lost none of his storytelling finesse and geopolitical grasp.

The premise is simple: if the world is increasingly controlled by computers, then anyone with the ability to hack into those computers becomes a weapon of incalculable value.

Enter 17- year- old Luke Jennings, a techie genius, whose skill at hacking into the protected American military computer at Fort Meade from his upstairs bedroom in an English provincial town has come to the attention of the British Security Service.

Luke, known as the Fox, is spirited away to work for the Government, where his exceptional feats inevitably turn him into a target for an assassination squad.

This is Forsyth at his spellbinding best.

PERFECT TEN by Jacqueline Ward (Corvus £12.99, 320 pp)

THIS compelling debut from a psychologist is about revenge in the age of social media.

Caroline’s marriage to her manipulative husband Jack has broken down. He’s left her, but he has also persuaded the authorities that she’s not a fit person to look after their two children, and they, too, have disappeared.

An academic psychologist, she has descended into a drunken stupor, filling her house with endless gadgets.

Then lost luggage arrives belonging to her husband, including a leather briefcase containing his journal.

It makes explosive reading as he lists 37 women with whom he has had affairs, rating each with a score from one to ten. Enraged, Caroline sets out to take her ruthless revenge by identifying and then targeting the women in an attempt to discredit her arrogant husband — and get her children back. Wildly entertaining.

ALL THIS I WILL GIVE TO YOU by Dolores Redondo (Amazon Crossing £8.99, 494 pp)

FROM the author of the bestselling The Baztan Trilogy comes this sprawling, magical story about an aristocratic Spanish family.

There is more than a touch of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather about it, set in Galicia rather than New York. Successful novelist Manuel Ortigosa is told that his husband, Alvaro, has been killed in a car crash in Lugo, which comes as a shock because he was supposed to have been 600 miles away in Barcelona.

Manuel discovers the man he has been married to for 15 years has a secret life as the scion of the most powerful families in Galicia. What’s more, he is also a Marquis.

Gradually, the possibility that Alvaro may have been murdered emerges, as Manuel digs deeper into the family and reveals ugly truths about life behind a facade of wealth and privilege.