Carlos Fuentes, Mexico's leading novelist, author of The Old Gringo, Terra Nostra and The Death of Artemio Cruz, has produced what is probably the first Third World spy thriller, an action-filled, quick-paced novel of intrigue as contemporary as a headline. The Hydra Head has a constant political reality as backdrop: the permanent tension in the Middle East and the vast new oil resources of Mexico, the setting for a brilliant attempt to portray the diversity of one man's experience.