Spy Out the Land by Jeremy Duns
It might sound strange for a reviewer to describe rough, tough, bloodthirsty crime thrillers as their comfort zone, but it’s good to step away from the genre you know and love occasionally. Welcome to the world of spies, double agents, double-crossing and danger, evoked in…
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
First published in 2008, Child 44 put Tim Rob Smith on the map as an author of taut, gritty crime fiction. Like Gorky Park, it used Soviet Russia as its backdrop – with all the nuances of communist justice. Also like Gorky Park it’s now been…
Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson
Lionel Davidson and his thrillers have been unjustly neglected in recent years. He blazed a trail with articulate and complex international spy stories just before John Le Carre and Len Deighton achieved celebrity status. However, a few years ago Philip Pullman selected Davidson’s 1994 novel…
The Beast in the Red Forest by Sam Eastland
The Inspector Pekkala series began in 2010 with The Eye of the Red Tsar and now reaches its fifth novel. The books are set in the Soviet Union during WWII; specifically on the Eastern Front where Axis forces battled the Red Army from 1941 onwards…
A Morbid Habit by Annie Hauxwell
If you had to create a check-list for a spy fiction heroine, then Catherine Berlin would not tick many boxes. Let’s try: Young and glamorous? No, she shows all of her 57 years, and looks slightly the worse for wear. High profile job? Sorry. She’s…
Kill with a Borrowed Knife: or Agent Ai by Michael Wreford
Plenty of spy and espionage stories focus on Europe and Russia, set mainly between the 1930s and the 1970s, when borders were stricter, and the flow of information across them was mainly in the form of papers lining the false bottoms of suitcases. Agent Ai…
NTN: Chasing The Storm by Martin Molsted
It’s April, 2009, and on a peaceful spring afternoon in Hamburg, businessman Torgrim Rygg witnesses a woman being shot dead, and sets off in a fruitless pursuit of her attacker. It’s an action that will have huge consequences for the former member of the Norwegian…