Suggestions for spy novels.

November 25, 2006 10:09 AM

I like Len Deighton. I like John Le Carré. Who else is there, and what is their best?

I prefer small spy stories, about realistic situations. What else should I pick up for that kind of feel?

posted by jon_kill to media & arts (17 comments total)

Anything by Alan Furst.
posted by orthogonality at 10:51 AM on November 25, 2006

There's Robert Littel. The Amateur.
posted by Topkid at 11:07 AM on November 25, 2006

Martin Cruz Smith : Gorky Park, Polar Star. Technically about detectives, but, set against espionage. Very well written in my opinion, for the genre and also by any standard.
posted by Rumple at 11:15 AM on November 25, 2006

I finished The Mission Song last night. LeCarré is without equal.

Have you tried Charles McCarry? The Last Supper was good.
posted by Snerd at 11:34 AM on November 25, 2006

Some authors have already been mentioned, but other replies to this earlier question might be helpful.
posted by bigmuffindaddy at 11:54 AM on November 25, 2006

There’s Robert Ludlum, of course, but the only books of his I can recommend in good faith are The Road to Gandolfo and The Road to Omaha. Those two I found very funny; as to the rest, well, I was a teenager and I was very into the genre, which I think for most people leads to reading stacks of crap as well as the gems. Nowadays I’ll still happily read Deighton—if you haven’t read Bomber go and read it now, it is fantastic—and le Carré, but not most of Robert Ludlum or Tom Clancy.
posted by Aidan Kehoe at 12:15 PM on November 25, 2006

Charles McCarry is excellent, but important to read the novels in order since it's an unfolding story. Abebooks.com can help you find the earlier (out-of-print) ones. Alan Furst, yes. Hmmm. Names escape me. I'll add more later.
posted by LeisureGuy at 12:24 PM on November 25, 2006

Frederick Forsyth
Ian Fleming
Robert Baer was recommended to me but I've not had a chance to read him yet.

I love Deighton and Le Carré so I've taken the liberty of going beyond the spy thriller to also recommend:
John Katzenbach
Phil Whitaker
Nevil Shute
Ian Rankin
Michael Connelly
posted by ceri richard at 12:48 PM on November 25, 2006

bigmuffindaddy's link fixed
posted by ceri richard at 12:49 PM on November 25, 2006

Greg Rucka's Queen and Country is both a novel series and a comic book series about a British Special Ops officer. Haven't read the novels, but the comics are excellent; really gritty, unglamorous current espionage.
posted by JDC8 at 12:54 PM on November 25, 2006

Well, this blows the realistic situations right out of the water, but if you also happen to read SF you should try Charlie Stross's The Atrocity Archive. Small-spy novel set in a world where Lovecraft was true, more or less.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:55 PM on November 25, 2006

Oh, good question. Second the Martin Cruz Smith and Alan Furst recommendations and I'd add Charles Cumming (A Spy By Nature, Hidden Man).
posted by reynir at 12:55 PM on November 25, 2006

Spycatcher by Peter Wright. Not actually fiction, but it was a very good read when I was in a spy fiction phase....
posted by BishopsLoveScifi at 5:24 PM on November 25, 2006

I really, really enjoyed the Quiller books by Adam Hall (Elleston Trevor, actually), written from 1965-1995. They're lean, fast-moving, realistic Cold War stories that whipsaw you around with sudden narrative shifts while delivering lots of psychological insight and action. Great fun. The first one, The Quiller Memorandum, is a classic of the spy genre; it won the 1966 Edgar Award for best novel and was reissued in a nice trade paperback edition a few years back. I read 4 others in the series, as I recall, and liked them a lot. The hero's a terse loner type, but one who doesn't use guns, has an odd obsession with his nervous system (he calls it "the organism") and is under few illusions about what he's doing or why (for the adrenaline kick, mainly). I think the Quiller series is relatively underappreciated by folks who don't do spy novels much, but folks in the know generally rave about the series.
posted by mediareport at 7:34 PM on November 25, 2006

Absolutely you want Quiller. If you can get ahold of, The Tango Briefing but they're all great.
posted by Rash at 7:59 PM on November 25, 2006

A warning about McCarry - I read and liked his early books, but stopped reading him later on when he started to let his inner wingnut show through - he really hated Clinton.

A relatively unknown cold war novel I really enjoyed was Dunn's Conundrum, by Stan Lee.
posted by rfs at 9:16 PM on November 25, 2006

John Buchan's Richard Hannay novels are all pretty cracking reads. They're very dated - written and set during the First World War, highly jingoistic and so on, and Buchan can't seem to start a novel without saying something unpleasant about Jews in the first few pages. But they're also well written, pacy and interesting on romantic-imperialist notions of the day. Greenmantle is also weirdly topical what with all the jihad stuff. Jim Prideaux in le Carre's Tinker, Tailor is a sort of neo-Hannay figure. Going back slightly further, The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers is often said to be the start of the modern spy novel. It's very atmospheric but there's a lot of sailing interest.

Graham Greene also wrote several spy thrillers that are very clearly precursors to le Carre - Stamboul Train, A Gun for Sale, The Quiet American and The Third Man are probably the ones to go for. There's also Our Man in Havana, a spy comedy riffed on in le Carre's Tailor of Panama. The other great pre-le Carre realistic spy writer is Eric Ambler, who wrote vividly about the menace of European fascism in the 1930s as well as during the war. Cause for Alarm is said to be a good one and Journey into Fear is very enjoyable (as well as being a big influence on Fleming's From Russia With Love, probably the best James Bond novel). Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household is also worth seeking out - a very readable cult classic about an aristocratic sportsman who tries to assassinate a Hitler-like dictator, fails, and goes (excitingly) on the run.

One more suggestion: if you like big, dark, morally troubled realistic novels with spies in, try A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone.
posted by Mocata at 6:37 AM on November 27, 2006