WARLORD'S SON (T/PB)

To survive, he will need a 'fixer': a nimble, well-connected jack of all trades who can save his skin yet take him where the action is. And for every journalist in Peshawar, the real action is across the border in Afghanistan, where AI Qaeda lur and armed Taliban fighters still cling to power in their mountain strongholds. Soon Skelly and his fixer Najeeb, the banished son of a tribal warlord, are driving dusty roads west in the shadowy wake of ex-Mujahedeen Mahmood Razaq, who, armed with dubious assurances of American backing, hopes to stake his claim as leader of the next regime. Skelly's quest for the scoop oflifetime is no less grandiose. He is determined to track down the charismatic man the whole world is seeking. But it is Najeeb, torn by his own divided loyalties, who must find the way for both of them, in a land where a single misstep - and a single lapse of trust - can prove fatal.