The Best Spy Thrillers
This article is part of the free ebook Need to Know, which you can read on this website or download here.
The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler (1939)
A prototype for the thriller as a quest, Eric Ambler’s masterpiece follows the crime novelist Charles Latimer’s obsessive attempts to trace the life of a murdered gangster through the grimy streets of Istanbul, Sofia, Athens, Belgrade and Paris. Ambler expertly seeds political and social commentary through Latimer’s voyage into a frightening world of conspiracy and intrigue.
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming (1953)
James Bond’s mission in Ian Fleming’s first novel, set around a casino in northern France, is to defeat the grotesque Le Chiffre at baccarat, thereby putting the man at the mercy of his ruthless Russian paymasters. However, things don’t go to plan. There are no gadgets or volcanic lairs here, and Bond himself is a much more complex and thoughtful character than his popular image; his anguished discussions of ethics with the French agent René Mathis are closer to Camus than quips with Q. A dark, taut and brutal read.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré (1963)
If you’ve struggled with Le Carré’s longer or later works, you may be surprised how different The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is from them. The plot is Byzantine, but the prose is sparse and gem-hard, at times reading like hard-boiled poetry. Alec Leamas, the archetypal pawn in a wider spy game, is our seemingly cynical companion all the way to the devastating finale at the Berlin Wall.
The 9th Directive by Adam Hall (1966)
Forgettable titles and pulpy cover art might have contributed to Adam Hall—a pseudonym for Elleston Trevor—not being as well known as the writers above, but his 19-strong series about a British agent known only as Quiller are the most exciting spy thrillers ever published. They’re sheer suspense, written in near-hallucinogenic prose that seems to slow time. In this instalment, Quiller must stop an assassin from taking out a British royal by assassinating him first.
Seventeen Moments of Spring by Yulian Semyonov (1969)
Spy fiction isn’t solely the preserve of Brits, as this superb Soviet thriller shows. Both it and the subsequent TV adaptation remain iconic in Russia today, but while its patriotic appeal is clear there’s a lot more going on. Our hero, Max von Stierlitz, initially appears to be a mid-ranking SS officer in Berlin in early 1945. But we soon learn that von Stierlitz is in fact Maxim Isayev, a long-term deep-cover Soviet agent. Ordered by Moscow to discover which high-ranking Nazi is conducting secret peace talks with the Americans, he soon finds the net starting to close in on him.
Berlin Game by Len Deighton (1983)
Two decades after rocketing to fame with The IPCRESS File, Len Deighton reinvented the spy story a second time for the latter leg of the Cold War. MI6 desk man Bernard Samson is sent back into the field and to his beloved Berlin to help a defector to come over, but quickly realises there is a high-level traitor within British intelligence. The novel has eight sequels and a prequel, forming a labyrinthine espionage epic lightened with laconic wit.
The Tiger, Life by Sarah Gainham (1983)
Best known for Night Falls on the City, Sarah Gainham’s Cold War spy thrillers are now scandalously out of print. They are all well worth discovering: her tense, intricate plots take place against a brilliantly realised backdrop of eastern Europe, and often drew on real espionage operations. Her final novel, this is an autobiographical tale set among the press pack of Berlin in the late 1940s. It’s haunting, thrilling and beautifully written.
Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews (2013)
The first in a trilogy by a retired CIA veteran, Red Sparrow follows two mole-hunts, one Russian and one American. The star of the show is Dominika Egerova, a beautiful and hyper-intuitive ballet dancer turned Russian operative. Featuring honey traps, a psychopathic Spetsnaz “mechanic” and surveillance on the streets of Moscow, Helsinki, Washington and elsewhere, this is a great sprawling spy story that revisits the Cold War classics and recasts them for the era of Putin.
Real Tigers by Mick Herron (2017)
Mick Herron’s series about disgraced spooks exiled to a shabby London office known as Slough House has reinvigorated the espionage genre. Jackson Lamb, the brash but cunning overseer of the “Slow Horses”, is a genius creation who will have you howling with laughter. You could start with the first novel in the series, Slow Horses, but I’m opting for this, the third, in which one of the crew is kidnapped. Intricately plotted and tense, it also offers poignant insights into human foibles and follies.
To the Lions by Holly Watt (2019)
While this novel doesn’t technically feature any spies, there is plenty of spying in it, specifically the investigative journalist Casey Benedict and her colleagues, who go undercover to infiltrate a horrifying corporate “sport” in the north African desert. The techniques and ethical conflicts of Benedict’s work are expertly explored, but Watt never neglects the suspense. An excellent sequel, The Dead Line, has just been published.