It is terrible to have to admit you’re an addict, but here goes. I know I should be spending the summer in a hammock reading Jane Austen. Or I should go on with the latest and best version of War and Peace, which I find daunting.

But an addict is an addict and I just want to warn you that in July comes Christopher Reich’s Rules of Deception. This is a pallid title for one of the best thrillers I’ve ever read and you can look for it from Doubleday with an electronic butterfly on the cover.

Writer Reich is the best-selling guy who wrote Numbered Account and The Patriots Club. He won the International Writers Award for the best novel in 2006 and I expect he might be up again for this prize with his latest.

I don’t want to give away anything here but the mise-en-scène is mostly Switzerland and the plot affects the fate of the world when it comes to Iran, so talk about being au courant. It is! Our flawed hero is Dr. Jonathan Ransom, a member of Doctors Without Borders. As we open, he and his wife Emma are on the slopes skiing a difficult mountain in a coming blizzard. What happens then? People dying right and left, involvements of the Swiss government, the CIA, world organizations for peace, Israel, Hamas, diplomats, subterfuge and everybody seeming guilty and culpable … even best friends!

Yes, it’s all about nuclear capabilities and a bulletproof Mercedes is one of the stars of this tale.

I just want you other thriller addicts to be on the alert for this one and to let you know you have something to look forward to other than the Democratic Convention happening August 25 to 28.

P.S. In case you care, author Reich is a lifelong friend of our own Candice Bergen. But I had already written my rave for his book before I knew that.

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Speaking of the Democratic Convention, Michael Lutin, the witty former astrologist for Vanity Fair, says this to me: “The national election of 2008 will take place with Pluto at the end of Sagittarius. A couple of weeks later Pluto will move back into Capricorn for the next 15 years. Don’t get stars in your eyes and start hyperventilating because your liberator (Obama) has come at last. And even if you’re an Obamannoyed Hillarino, don’t think that women have made history – yet. Pluto in Sag represents hope and dreams. It’s just that Pluto in Capricorn represents waking reality after the snooze button fails to work. Change is coming, yes, but not tomorrow or next week. Pluto in Capricorn represents the squeeze of power exercised by a tight-fisted and towering conservative aristocracy that may indeed eventually be toppled, but one that is not going down without a fight.”

Lutin characterizes Obama as a “little boy himself,” saying he can’t make a major move without some woman whispering directions. And Hillary, says he, astrologically speaking, “can never escape from dominant, controlling narcissistic men.”

So, re-fasten your seat belts. We’re still in for a bumpy night.

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Maybe you’re a “Sex and the City” fan, maybe you’re not. But here’s a final word from Kim Cattrall who is the best thing in the movie as the sexy Samantha. Some people have compared her character to Aphrodite, the goddess of love. But writer Tom Leonard says, “Perhaps Chaucer’s worldly Wife of Bath is nearer to the mark.”

Kim: “People have given the movie too much weight and too much responsibility. It’s a heightened reality, a fairy tale, in some ways a guilty pleasure for a lot of people … we’re not trying to change the world, or define what love or sex is, or what women are!”