[It seems as if we in Britain are acquiring a] taste for grey heroes in our fiction. A. Alvarez's thriller [Hunt] echoes this trend, by concerning itself with the affairs of one Conrad Hunt, sales manager unextraordinary, who tries to mix a boring business and family life with a bit of painting and a lot of gambling…. Conrad is harassed, assaulted, intimidated. So is the reader, who finally begins to suspect that there is Something Really Big behind all the gloomy paranoia. But there isn't really, and Mr Alvarez has the last laugh in a well-written, atmospheric and sophisticated thriller which demonstrates that even conspiracies these days are neither black nor white, but that inevitable intermediate shade. (p. 651)

John Naughton, in The Listener (© British Broadcasting Corp. 1978; reprinted by permission of John Naughton), May 18, 1978.