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
I highlighted the first lines from Eric Ambler and John le Carré novels awhile back and I thought it would be interesting to do something similar for Mick Herron. Will we see any changes or discover heretofore undiscovered trends? Hard as it was, I tried to stick with just the first sentence, although I couldn’t …
Wilkinson kicks off 2019 right with her excellent novel American Spy.
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. Herron's short story/novella The Drop was released a few months after London Rules in the fall of 2018. Read more I've written on Herron and other Slough House …
Michael Moreci has become known for his sci fi and comics work but this summer he’s branching out into thrillers. His Roche Limit comic trilogy is sci-fi storytelling at its best. The first part reads like a Blade Runner-esque noir thriller, the second Aliens meets the Southern Reach trilogy and the finale is reminiscent of …
The biggest story of last year was the announcement that John le Carré had written a new Smiley novel. Fans of le Carré's all over the world were shocked. Le Carré had seemed to put a button on Smiley with The Secret Pilgrim so every fan is excited about the new novel. As a collector, …
In anticipation of Mick Herron’s US release of London Rules, the fifth book in his Slough House series, I’m doing a re-read of the first four books. Second is Dead Lions from 2013. Read more on other Slough House books here. “Dead lions,” Molly said. “What about them?” “It’s a kids’ party game. You have …
Publishers are always looking to refresh the backlist of authors and sell more copies. In the 70's the beautiful painted book covers went out of fashion and photo covers came into vogue. The UK publisher Fontana had paperback rights to many of the well known thriller writers of the time like Desmond Bagley, Alastair Maclean, …
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 …
Ian Fleming didn't leave to the reader's imagination what James Bond liked to read. As written by Edward Biddulph on the excellent James Bond site - Artistic License Renewed - we can see some of the books Bond perused while off duty. We're not as lucky with other famous fictional spies. That's the idea behind …
Continue reading Reading recommendations for spies – Quiller