Spy Novels

Now is the time for the cloak and dagger. There’s nothing like a good spy novel to take you away to somewhere new and provide a great page turner. They also treat the reader with intelligence and bring a specific period of time to life. Personally, I have been ensnared in espionage thanks to The Double Game by Dan Fesperman. Former journalist and current PR man Bill Cage is lured into Cold War intrigue as he gets clues from cerebral spy classics going back to 1821 and James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy  (which depicts a spy working for George Washington). Other pre Cold War titles referred to include The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (1907), which is available in print and ebook. And, of course The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Le Carré intertwines his firsthand knowledge of the British Intelligence service with first rate storytelling set in Cold War Berlin. A modern master of the World War II spy novel is Alan Furst. I really enjoyed Spies of the Balkans which took me to 1940 Greece and its resistance fighters as Nazi Germany invades, a time and place I knew nothing about.

If you prefer non-fiction, try the autobiography of the biggest double agent of them all Kim Philby, My Silent War. Philby was the chief of Soviet counterintelligence for MI-6 and betrayed every Allied secret to the Soviets at this disposal.