UN HEADQUARTERS in New York is hosting yet another gathering of world leaders concerning the climate crisis, in Manhattan Down by Michael Cordy (Bantam, £16.99). And of course nothing will be done, because nothing ever is. Until everyone in Manhattan suddenly falls asleep, as does anyone who tries to enter the city.

A save-the-world group claims responsibility, promising to waken the millions of sleepers safely in exchange for real action on the environment and an irreversible taming of the finance gods. A few people in the area, for reasons later revealed, are immune to the shutdown. They have to go along with the terrorists to stay alive, but can they trust them to keep their word?

It’s a pleasingly tense and twisty techno-thriller, but what’s really striking about this book is that the authorial voice, and just about all the characters, take it for granted that the activists’ radical aims are perfectly reasonable and indeed necessary, no matter how cruel their means. There’s no-one left on Earth who opposes the abolition of billionaires, it seems, except the billionaires.