Here at Fixabook, we often lament the apparent reluctance of publishers to use great quotes from inside a book on the back cover. They choose instead to plaster their jackets with identikit media reviews and self-important puffs from their authors’ friends.

So three cheers for Guardian Books, who have let this author’s voice do all the work on this cover. Even more cheers when you realise that this is, in fact, non-fiction: an analysis of contemporary Russia.

Mafia State is a big, weighty book. It could easily look like a very dull, rather academic tome. Instead, this blurb, coupled with a very mass-market piece of design, makes it feel like a thriller — scary, personal and mysterious.

Publishing just as Spooks and Tinker, Tailor… hit the headlines, this is an eminently sensible direction to take. It should lift the book above the limitations of its genre.