Comments on: Suggestions for spy novels.

Question: Suggestions for spy novels.

jon_kill — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 10:09:33 -0800

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?

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 10:51:09 -0800

Anything by Alan Furst.

By: Topkid

Topkid — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 11:07:29 -0800

There's Robert Littel. The Amateur.

By: Rumple

Rumple — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 11:15:16 -0800

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.

By: Snerd

Snerd — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 11:34:01 -0800

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

Have you tried Charles McCarry? The Last Supper was good.

By: bigmuffindaddy

bigmuffindaddy — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 11:54:09 -0800

Some authors have already been mentioned, but other replies to this earlier question might be helpful.

By: Aidan Kehoe

Aidan Kehoe — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 12:15:52 -0800

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.

By: LeisureGuy

LeisureGuy — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 12:24:32 -0800

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.

By: ceri richard

ceri richard — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 12:48:25 -0800

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

By: ceri richard

ceri richard — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 12:49:15 -0800

bigmuffindaddy's link fixed

By: JDC8

JDC8 — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 12:54:38 -0800

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.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 12:55:29 -0800

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.

By: reynir

reynir — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 12:55:47 -0800

Oh, good question. Second the Martin Cruz Smith and Alan Furst recommendations and I'd add Charles Cumming (A Spy By Nature, Hidden Man).

By: BishopsLoveScifi

BishopsLoveScifi — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 17:24:17 -0800

Spycatcher by Peter Wright. Not actually fiction, but it was a very good read when I was in a spy fiction phase....

By: mediareport

mediareport — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 19:34:37 -0800

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.

By: Rash

Rash — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 19:59:24 -0800

Absolutely you want Quiller. If you can get ahold of, The Tango Briefing but they're all great.

By: rfs

rfs — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 21:16:07 -0800

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.

By: Mocata

Mocata — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 06:37:13 -0800

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.