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.