Beside the Syrian Sea by James Wolff
Reading this debut feels like a stroll in a dangerous section of town. That’s probably how the protagonist in this espionage thriller feels too. Jonas is a former desk-job employee of MI5. His father, part of a church delegation visiting Syria, has been kidnapped by…
That Old Black Magic by Cathi Unsworth
Another music-related title for a Cathi Unsworth standalone book, and this one had me in its spell from early doors. Like Without The Moon – which we reviewed in 2015, it is set firmly in World War II. Open this eye-catching and slightly spooky cover,…
London Rules by Mick Herron
In John LeCarre’s classic Smiley’s People, Moscow Rules are a form of ultra-cautious tactics for operating in the most dangerous circumstances. They include such measures as dead drops, chalk marks as signal markers, and careful face-to-face meetings. In the end, they were not enough to…
This Is What Happened
Written by Mick Herron – Since 2013, Mick Herron has been writing about London’s espionage community to great acclaim. There are four novels so far in his satirical Jackson Lamb series, with a fifth, London Rules, arriving this summer. Dead Lions was awarded the 2013…
Deadly Game
Written by Matt Johnson — If you like your crime fiction to be full of thrills and conspiracies, with more than a dash of authentic descriptions of weapons, raids and SAS-type tactics, then this series by Matt Johnson should be destined for your reading pile. The…
Real Tigers
Mick Herron has carved out something of a niche with his accounts of the more disfunctional side of the espionage industry. London’s Slough House may sound imposing, but it is basically a scrapyard for spies who, for whatever reason, screwed up their careers with MI5. We…
Real Tigers by Mick Herron
With Nobody Walks, Mick Herron did something a little different to his previous efforts, though still within the espionage genre, albeit tangentially. Now he returns to the fictional world of his Slough House series and its slow horses. You may recall that Slough House is…