I missed it last year, but I’m back with my end of year reading wrap up. I read just over 90 books this year, but only about 11 or 12 books that actually came out in 2024. I’ll hit some of the highlights before touching on my favorite recent releases. Best recommendation from an 11 …
I’ve always been fascinated with the history of the cold war spy novel. I had previously considered Atomsk, released in 1949 and written by Carmichael Smith, the first but it appears to only be the first US Cold War novel. The UK’s Humphrey Slater wrote Conspirator and beat Atomsk by a year. Conspirator follows a …
Continue reading Conspirator by Humphrey Slater – The first Cold War novel?
I’m pleased to welcome guest Dick Woodgate to the site for the below book review. ‘I don’t like killing, but I’m good at it.’A Kill in the Morning by Graeme Shimmin As opening lines go, it’s a good one by any standard. It’s memorable too – I read Graeme Shimmin’s novel, A Kill in the Morning a few years ago now, yet I didn’t need …
I’m always excited to find a new spy novel series by an author that does something fresh in the genre. I was lucky enough to have the pleasure of reading one such series recently. Thanks to the recommendation of the excellent Spybrary discussion group, I listened to the audiobook for Khurrum Rahman’s debut novel East …
Continue reading East of Hounslow & Homegrown Hero by Khurrum Rahman – Review
It’s been 8 years since we’ve had a novel dedicated to the trials and tribulations of Milo Weaver, Olen Steinhauer’s former spy turned spymaster. Milo was a member of a secretive CIA department called Tourism, it’s agents tasked with cleaning up messes that the government didn’t want to have to acknowledge. Members of the department, …
Continue reading The Last Tourist by Olen Steinhauer – A Review
Matthew Bradford and Jeff Quest recap and give their opinions on episode 8, the season finale, titled The Final Mission of Bravo's new reality TV show - Spy Games.
Who was crowned the ultimate spy?
FYI - We had a little audio wackiness for the first couple minutes before it cleared up.
Matthew Bradford and Jeff Quest recap and give their opinions on episode 7 of Bravo's new reality TV show - Spy Games.
Who will will be crowned the ultimate spy?
Matthew Bradford and Jeff Quest recap and give their opinions on episode 6 of Bravo's new reality TV show - Spy Games.
Who will will be crowned the ultimate spy?
Matthew Bradford and Jeff Quest recap and give their opinions on episode 5 of Bravo's new reality TV show - Spy Games.
Who will will be crowned the ultimate spy?
For more on Mick Herron's Slough House series go here. Mick Herron has seemed to enjoy playing in the expanded sandbox of the Slough House universe, writing a novel adjacent to the series, multiple novellas and with The Last Dead Letter, his first short story in the world of the Slow Horses. This story was …
Charles McCarry, who passed away this past February at the age of 88, wrote what might be the most intriguing and enjoyable spy novels ever in his first novel The Miernik Dossier. The 1973 book is in the epistolary format, told through 89 different documents that make up the file looking at the suspected Polish …
Continue reading The Miernik Dossier by Charles McCarry – Review
I've read a few spy related books recently and thought I'd offer a quick round up of some recent releases. The Bayern Agenda - Dan Moren I've always thought that spies and scifi can be a good fit. By setting your book in the far future you can play with some of the spy tropes without …
When I first heard of a television adaptation of the movie Three Days of the Condor, itself an adaptation of James Grady's novel Six Days of the Condor, I was slightly skeptical but willing to give it a chance. The book is a classic, what spy fiction fan doesn’t love a book about a guy …
In the history of spy novels, Mick Herron’s Slough House is becoming as memorable a location as le Carré’s spy headquarters the Circus. Compared to London Rules, which took off like an out of control car, Joe Country is a more sedate affair. In a narrative shift from previous books, the first pages reveal that not all of our slow horses will be returning to the stable, leaving a sense of impending doom hanging over all the characters.
Is this the best spy reality show? Yes.
The 2002 book Spy’s Fate is one of those novels you’d never discover unless you went into a bookstore. A recommendation by one of the staff and only stocked because of their passion for it, I picked it up on a whim after seeing it several times on visits to a local bookstore called The …
In anticipation of Mick Herron’s US release of London Rules, the fifth book in his Slough House series, I did a re-read of his Slough House related work. Reconstruction came out in 2008 and is in many ways the proto-Slough House novel. Read more I've written on Herron and other Slough House books here. For as …
Wilkinson kicks off 2019 right with her excellent novel American Spy.
As is becoming a bit of a tradition, I'm rounding out the year with a couple of posts looking at some of my favorite things from the year. Some are spy related, some are not but all were memorable experiences. I'll be breaking this up over two posts with the first focusing on some things …
The Literary Review, a quarterly publication by Fairleigh Dickinson University, dedicated their Winter issue in 2015 to fiction and poems that the editors felt in some way invoked the writings of John le Carré. Minna Proctor, the issue’s editor, refers to the issue as an experiment, and as such, I'd mark it as an interesting …
Kate Atkinson’s latest book Transcription tells the story of fictional spy Juliet Armstrong. She’s an eighteen year old who is recruited to assist with an operation to track German spies in London during WW2. While a colleague reels them in from the apartment next door, she transcribes their recorded conversations. Atkinson jumps between three timelines …
Over the past several years author Mark Henshaw has quietly been putting out some of the best modern CIA based espionage novels. Henshaw (currently or formerly, it’s kind of hazy) worked for the CIA as an analyst. While other former Agency employees such as Jason Matthews have gotten the buzz, Henshaw's spy thrillers rival the …
A look at Mick Herron's spy novel, Slow Horses
Antony Johnston is best known for his varied work in the comics field. Over the course of his career he’s taken on just about every genre imaginable. With the recent successful adaptation of his and artist Sam Hart's graphic novel The Coldest City (as the movie Atomic Blonde) he’s become known more as a spy …
More Harm Than Good is Andrew Grant's return to his David Trevellyan spy series after a two year hiatus. His previous novels in the series, Even and Die Twice, were excellent entries into the spy genre. In his latest, gone are the chapter opening observations on spycraft or Trevellyan's past, which I quite enjoyed for …
Finding books that John le Carré has recommended, contributed to or written introductions/forewords to has become something of a passion project for me. In the process of doing this research I came upon its flip side - the fake le Carré blurb scandal. Back in 1991 a writer named Derek Van Arman was involved in a …
This is another in my posts on spy tourism. Read other posts in the series here. Located in London, I had marginal expectations for the London Film Museum’s Bond in Motion exhibit. I'm not any sort of huge car guy and as this is an exhibit looking at Bond vehicles, how much am I really …
This past summer I was able to take a road trip to Washington D.C. and while there visited the International Spy Museum. Open since 2002, it's one of the few museums dedicated to espionage. It's set to move to a new, bigger location in early 2018 so this is a last look at the museum's …
If you are a spy fan and you are in London, odds are you will want to take a spy tour. I was able to take advantage of many of the ones I found during my recent trip there and wanted to offer a list of the various options. I didn't take a bad one, …
Wow. After over twenty five years we have a new Smiley book. Something I never thought I'd see happen, has happened. Was it worth going back to the well? I think so. Before we get too far, it's best to set expectations. In truth, A Legacy of Spies is about Peter Guillam, not Smiley. It’s …
Continue reading Non spoiler review: A Legacy of Spies by John le Carré
For a review of an even newer spy reality show, click here. Everyone has their guilty pleasures and one of mine is reality TV. When spies and reality TV mix, how can I resist? SPY was a BBC show that aired back in 2004 and spun out of the success of the show MI-5. 8 …
The Illinois Holocaust Museum is hosting another traveling spy-themed exhibit following up on its successful hosting several years ago of Spies, Traitors and Saboteurs. This new exhibit, Operation Finale, is focused on the secret plan to kidnap Adolf Eichmann and bring to him to Israel for trial. Eichmann was one of the officers responsible for …
A few weeks back I wrote about books that John Le Carré has either introduced or recommended. I've found even more Le Carré books that either have a JlC written introduction, blurb or essay. He also recently revealed the three books he had recently been reading. The Rape of a Nation by Marcus Bleasdale - …
For even more of my posts on John le Carré, click here. I recently read A Small Town in Germany by John le Carré and loved it. It's surprisingly maligned by most critics and fans but it’s very readable. The book follows Alan Turner, the Foreign Office cleanup man, as he's sent to the …
Continue reading A Small Town in Germany by John le Carré – An appreciation and rarity
Licence Expired : The unauthorized James Bond Edited by Madeline Ashby and David Nickle This review is was originally posted on the website Literary 007. This book is the first to explore James Bond outside of the constraints of the officially licensed Bond continuation novels. Currently in Canada rights over written works revert to the …
Following up on my previous post about "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," in the next few posts I'll be highlighting some of the odd or rare versions of the book I have. First is a compilation of le Carré's third, fourth, and fifth novels - The Spy Who, A Small town in …
"It's a Wonderful Life" meets the 9/11 report If Susan Hasler’s Intelligence was “24” meets “The Office”, it’s sequel, The Flat Bureaucrat, is “It’s a Wonderful Life” meets the 9/11 report. In case it isn’t readily apparent, that’s a good thing. Hasler’s years as an analyst in the CIA have served her well in her …
Eric Ambler's "lost" novel
Spy out the Land by Jeremy Duns From the book jacket, see below for the review - A time of turbulence 1975. A summit has been arranged between the Rhodesian government and various nationalist leaders, and is due to take place in railway dining car 49, midway along Victoria Falls Bridge. But Matthew Charamba, a key …
The Bureau of Diplomatic Security is the State Department’s security arm and is responsible for the safety of all U.S. diplomatic workers and any visiting foreign dignitaries. Ghost: Confessions of a Counter-Terrorism Agent, the true story of Burton’s time working on the Counter-Terrorism team for the DS, is riveting reading.
This site lists just about every spy novel series with two books or more and allows you to search by both author and by character name.
The man who runs the site obviously loves spy novels and the number of authors and books is huge. This is a great resource for anyone looking for new espionage stories.
Morrell’s The Spy who came for Christmas hits the spot for a book you never knew you needed – the Christmas spy tale. Paul Kagan is an undercover intelligence operative who breaks his cover to save an innocent baby, who just might bring peace to the Middle East. He finds refuge with a mother and son alone on Christmas eve, but his enemies are hot on his trail…
David Morrell follows up on his previous spy novels Brotherhood and Fraternity with this double sequel, The League of Night and Fog. The two protagonists from each of his previous novels, Saul and Drew, team up. The plot mix includes Nazis, ancient Mossad agents, international assassins and, of course, the CIA. The author begins the …
Ok, I'll admit it. Until now I hadn't read the most influential spy novel of the 20th century, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John LeCarre. Now that I have, it's easy to see why it had such a big effect. To discuss the plot too much is to spoil it, but …
Continue reading The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John LeCarre
It may be hard for me to fully explain how much I disliked this book, but I'm going to give it a try. It begins with the opening pages when we meet the improbably named hero, Court Gentry, otherwise known as The Gray Man. The Gray Man is a former CIA assassin that was burned …
In my internet travels I stumbled on this site, The Literature of Intelligence, dedicated to nonfiction books and articles on the Intelligence business. I've only just begun to scratch the surface of what is found there but the depth of information collected is pretty extraordinary. Being organized by a former member of the CIA turned …
Continue reading Intelligence bibliography – Spy Website of the Week
Picking up with ideas he started to explore in Brotherhood of the Rose, Morrell continues to look at the long term impact a life spent on killing would have on the soul. Can a person find peace and forgiveness when everything they've ever done has caused destruction and pain? Of course, this is all done …
David Morrell, better known as the writer of the novel the first Rambo movie was based on, wrote a spy trilogy in the early 1980s that has just been released in ebook format. The first, Brotherhood of the Rose, follows two orphans that have been raised as brothers and trained to become expert operatives for …
The Nearest Exit by Olen Steinhauer is the sequel to his first book in the series, The Tourist. Milo is an everyday working shlub trying to keep his marriage from falling apart. The only difference is that he works for the Department of Tourism, a secret CIA organization dedicated to doing the work that's so …
The 39 Steps stars Rupert Penry-Jones (of MI5/Spooks fame) as a military intelligence officer caught up in Events He Cannot Control in this loose british adaption of the John Buchanan novel. When a spy with coded details on a German plan to defeat Britain before World War I has even started is killed, Penry-Jones is …
MI-5 - Season Seven Some Spoilers ahead – Read at your own risk I have a love/hate relationship with MI-5, mostly leaning towards hate. The first 2 ½ seasons were great with multiple engaging characters, thrilling cliffhangers and interesting stories about issues relevant to real intelligence officers. Unfortunately, the last 3 ½ seasons have had …
There's something about the first person narrative that can really make a spy novel come alive. I think it's the fact that you are stuck inside the spy's head with all the paranoia that being alone and undercover would require. There was no writer better at this than Adam Hall in his Quiller novels. His spy, codenamed …
When you’re a tie-in novelist, you're always going to lag behind the TV show you are writing about. That’s certainly the case with Tod Goldberg’s The Giveaway, based on the USA show Burn Notice. His book has the unfortunate luck to use Biker gangs and Safety Deposit box robbing, both of which have played large …