The Hunt for a Book My Nephew Will Love

September 17, 2006 3:04 PM

Please help me select a book as a present for my nephew. He's 19, and when I gave him a Chapters gift card for his high school graduation last spring, he used it to buy a complete set of Tom Clancy novels. Political espionage/intrigue/adventure has to be the genre I know the least about. If my nephew likes Tom Clancy's and Frederick Forsythe's works, what other books in the same genre would he enjoy?
posted by orange swan to writing & language (25 comments total)

Len Deighton, for sure. Possibly umm.. oh bugger. Harry something or Gavin somethign. I'd recognize it if I saw the name. ONe of his main characters is called, err, Harry Maxim I think.

I used to be a lot more into those sorts of books.. when in doubt, go British over American.

Oh yes, John le Carre, of course, as well.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 3:10 PM on September 17, 2006

Ken Follett is very good at the political intrigue thriller sort of book, especially Triple, Eye of the Needle, The Man from St Petersburg and The Key to Rebecca.

John Grisham seems to be pretty popular. Frederick Forsythe, too.
posted by iconomy at 3:23 PM on September 17, 2006

You might try John Le Carre. He's written some of the best espionage/intrige/adventure out here, although it tends to be more morally ambiguous than the likes of Tom Clancy, and he doesn't have a hard-on for military hardware. I'd stay away from his most recent novels (like _A Constant Gardener_), and go with his spy ones. _A Perfect Spy_ is excellent. Also: _The Spy Who Came In From The Cold_, _The Honourable Schoolboy_, _The Looking Glass War_, _Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy_, and the Smiley series are great.

Graham Greene has also written some wonderful spy novels. _Our Man in Havana_ and _The Human Factor_ are recommended. Graham Green actually was a british spy, so he knows what he's writing about.
posted by Emanuel at 3:23 PM on September 17, 2006

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and The Looking Glass War, in that order, are the Smiley series, just to be clear. They're excellent.
posted by redfoxtail at 3:34 PM on September 17, 2006

If he liked earlier Clancy (Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger) over the later politik-heavy stuff (anything after Rising Sun, in my mind), you might want to try "Nimitz Class" / "Kilo Class" by Patrick Robinson. They're more focused on the naval operations than the politics, but they're a decent technothriller read.

Standard caveats regarding relatively conservative political content apply. I loved Clancy, Robinson, et. al. in my pre-political days, but these days I feel a bit conflicted reading them, since they obviously advance a military agenda I don't agree with.
posted by Alterscape at 3:37 PM on September 17, 2006

Dale Brown. Don't ever buy this pulpy fiction, every library in America will have them..
posted by kcm at 3:46 PM on September 17, 2006

Lee Child
posted by leafwoman at 4:16 PM on September 17, 2006

I second Emanuel. Graham Greene wrote some great spy novels, not to mention The Third Man and The Quiet American.
posted by infinitewindow at 4:40 PM on September 17, 2006

The Bannerman series by John Maxim. Not all the books are equal - the first two or three are better but they have an interesting twist on the world of spies and assassins.
posted by jaimystery at 4:53 PM on September 17, 2006

The book 'Dragon Fire' is getting rave reviews. It's by former Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, and is a "true to life" political thriller.
posted by cocoagirl at 5:33 PM on September 17, 2006

Graham Greene is the master, John Le Carre a worthy and wonderful succesor. Both are mentioned above. Not really a spy novel, but read The Quiet American and think about it not in terms of Vietnam, but Iraq. Good intentions gone wrong. And even Le Carre's non-Cold War novels are amazing. But their spy novels are great.

Once I read all those I wanted more. The next in line is probably Len Deighton. He wrote three spy trilogies: Game, Set and Match is the best. (Berlin Game, Mexico Set, London Match.) These all involve Bernard Samson, his cheating wife, and his firends, loyal and not, in the British Secret Service. Bernard is much more like Le Carre's George Smiley than Ian Fleming's James Bond. The other two trilogies are Hook, Line and Sinker, then Faith, Hope and Charity.

The main thing about these three, unlike Clancy, Ludlum, Grisham and the others, is incredible prose. Wonderfully well-written.
posted by bigmuffindaddy at 5:35 PM on September 17, 2006

The Len Deighton books that dirtynumbagelboy is grasping for are usually called the Harry Palmer series, though this is because of the films based on them. In the books the first-person narrator is never actually named.

The six books are:
The Ipress File (1962)
Horse Under Water (1963)
Funeral in Berlin (1964)
Billion Dollar Brain (1966)
Spy Story (1974)
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy (1976) [published in the USA as Catch A Falling Spy]

Yesterday's Spy (1975) may also form part of the series; it certainly overlaps with it.

Despite the books' relative age and the fact that the world they deal with is long vanished, they rock very hard indeed. Great prose, terrific dialogue and one-liners, a view of the British Secret Service that couldn't be further removed from Bond-fantasy, and a fair amount of running around East Berlin with a gun.
posted by Hogshead at 6:19 PM on September 17, 2006

Oh, bollocks. Ipcress File, not Ipress File.
posted by Hogshead at 6:20 PM on September 17, 2006

Very hot right now: Berry Eisler and his series of books that begin with Hard Rain. High tech hitman plus political intrigue.
posted by Bookhouse at 6:45 PM on September 17, 2006

This is bit of a stretch, but if he likes the technology aspect of techno-thrillers, he may like Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.
posted by b1tr0t at 6:56 PM on September 17, 2006

Trevanian's undeservedly forgotten Shibumi is about Nicolai Hel, a genius of peerless Russian aristocratic stock who's raised by Go masters during the Rape of Nanking, develops extra-sensory abilities while in prison, and emerges to become the world's greatest assassin. He lives in a hidden castle deep in the Basque country with a personal concubine--the only woman in the world who's a match for his accredited Stage IV Love Making abilities.

When the novel's bald improbabilites are laid out like that, it sounds like what it is: a sly parody of the international espionage/political thriller genre. But Trevanian writes with such a straight face and imitates Ian Fleming/Robert Ludlum house style so well that your nephew might not even notice. Shibumi is strange, messy, politically incorrect, prone to bizarre political and cultural tangents, and (perhaps purposely) unevenly paced; but in making fun of the excesses of the political espionage genre, Trevanian easily exceeds them in quality. Next to Nicolai Hel, James Bond, Jack Ryan, and Jason Bourne look like slobs and amateurs.
posted by Iridic at 6:59 PM on September 17, 2006

Just a thought: maybe some non-fiction? "Mayday", by Michael Beschloss, about Gary Powers/U2 capture. Something by James Bamford?
posted by zoinks at 7:13 PM on September 17, 2006

If he likes Clancy, he must read Larry Bond (Red Phoenix, among others). Bond is Clancy's uncredited co-author on "Red Storm, helped him wargame "Hunt For Red October," and developed the original paper "Harpoon" naval wargame.

Though it's not a spy or technothriller, I was absolutely captivated by Le Carre's "The Constant Gardner."
posted by lhauser at 7:16 PM on September 17, 2006

I haven't read it, but Richard Clarke wrote a thriller called The Scorpion's Gate. The politics of it are probably the opposite of Clancy's, though.
posted by brundlefly at 8:21 PM on September 17, 2006

He may like James Ellroy for change-up.
posted by john m at 10:27 PM on September 17, 2006

I've always enjoyed Richard North Patteson for political thrillers.
posted by the_epicurean at 3:21 AM on September 18, 2006

Get him some classic fiction. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad was outstanding.
posted by i_am_a_Jedi at 4:51 AM on September 18, 2006

The Company, by Robert Littel. CIA, history, cold war, politics-- it has it all. I don't recommend the Once and Future Spy, though.
posted by miss tea at 4:54 AM on September 18, 2006

He might like Greg Rucka's novels. For a little change of pace, he might also enjoy Rucka's comicbook Queen and Country (about a British "wet-ops" team) or graphic novels Whiteout and Whiteout: Melt (espionage/murder mysteries in Antarctica).
posted by hydropsyche at 6:03 AM on September 18, 2006

b1tr0t writes "This is bit of a stretch, but if he likes the technology aspect of techno-thrillers, he may like Stephenson's Cryptonomicon."

Oh my goodness yes. I bought a copy a few weeks ago, finally picked it up around the beginning of September. Could not put it down. Incredible book.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 2:43 PM on September 18, 2006