Good Spy Novels

[displacedyankeedem]

I've been on a spy novel binge lately, and am looking for some new ideas.

So far I've read the following:
Cardinal of the Kremlin, Red Rabbit-Tom Clancy
The Quiet Assassin-Thomas Kirkwood
Rift Zone (the best of the bunch)-Raelynn Hillhouse
Secret Life (nonfiction, but really good)-Benjamin Weiser

I can't overstate how good Rift Zone was, it was written by a woman who used to make a living smuggling stuff in and out of the East Bloc. It was very detailed and riviting.

Cardinal of the Kremlin is a little too technical, but if you read it as a simple spy novel its pretty good. Red Rabbit is the type of novel Clancy should do more of. The Quiet Assasin has an interesting storyline based on a plot to bring down the East German Government using stories (kinda hard to describe).

Secret Life reads like a novel, but its an amazingly true story about our top spy in the Warsaw Pact (if you ever wonder why we knew so many details about the planned crackdown on Solidarity, it's because he was the guy who WROTE the operational plans for it and passed them on to us).

[Kenneth ken]

1. A couple new ideas:

I will offer two by Frederick Forsyth:
The Fourth Protocol & The Deceiver

actually, I'd recommend anything by him. His most well-known is Day of The Jackal. No Comebacks is one of my favorite short stories, from a collection of short stories by him under that title.

and thanks for the recommendations. :hi:

[Howardx]

2. anything by lecarre

n/t

[bo44]

3. Absolute Friends by Le Carre

I have read almost all of his stuff since Honourable Schoolboy

[displacedyankeedem]

5. I'll have to pick him up

My university library has quite a few of his books.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

4. some recommendations

David Ignatius - Agents of Innocence
Robert Littell - The Company
Norman Mailer - Harlot's Ghost

The last two are more histories of the CIA than typical spy novels, but great stuff nonetheless.

[democracy eh]

6. Blood of Victory by Alan Furst

and numerous others by the author

WWII period, but not the big events

very good reads
well researched