100 books like Gorky Park

What Tom Clancy did for submarines with The Hunt For Red October, Stephen Hunter did with rifles and long-range shooting in Point of Impact, which was made into the movie Shooter with Mark Wahlberg in addition to a cable TV show of the same name. 

Hunter had already proven himself a talented thriller writer when he penned Point of Impact, but the excellent plot (a famous Vietnam sniper framed for an assassination by a shadowy conspiracy) combined with never-before-seen firearms technical detail that enhanced rather than bogged down the story made this novel a huge success and catapulted Hunter to the A-list.  

I wouldn’t lie; I love legal thrillers. And Michael Connelly is a crime-writing genius. The book is titled The Lincoln Lawyer because Mickey Haller, a criminal lawyer, works out of the back seat of a chauffeur-driven Lincoln.

In this first book by Connelly featuring Mickey, he has raised the bar for all legal thrillers to come. He puts Mickey, the lawyer, at the centre of the story as someone who is hoodwinked into accepting a case that can destroy him. Mickey has to run with his arms tied behind his back. Talk about being stuck between the Devil and his mother. 

A brilliant story and a fantastic trial—both in and out of the courtroom. 

Humans are always curious about what the future will look like. They are also concerned about the state impinging on their privacy and interfering with their lives. George Orwell masterfully combined these two human impulses in his classic novel. He wrote the book in 1949 to present his view of the future.

I read this book when I was in my mid-20s. I found it an interesting read, especially since many of his predictions did not come true. I was curious to know how past generations viewed our generation. 

The sins and tragedies of the Cold War are resurrected in Le Carré’s late-career novel, A Legacy of Spies.

After retiring from MI6, Peter Guillam is summoned back to London by his former bosses, intent on clearing up a botched spy operation first described in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. 

A Legacy of Spies shows that a story revolving around bureaucratic turf wars and incriminating paper trails can be just as suspenseful as any of James Bond’s implausible high-tech adventures.

George Smiley, among the 20th century’s most compelling fictional characters, makes a guest appearance, drawing us back into the Cold War’s darkest days, when men and women served as pawns in a geopolitical power game—and often paid the price for their role in these international dramas. 

Deon Meyer is one of South Africa’s best crime writers, and this novel is the second in a series featuring policeman Benny Griessel. Benny is a good cop and an ordinary guy. He’s also an alcoholic and his drinking has destroyed his family. Thirteen Hours is set in Cape Town and the action, as the title suggests, spans thirteen hours. A backpacker goes missing and the cops must find her before the bad guys do. It’s an edge-of-the-seat ride and I promise you’ll be cheering Benny on.

This is only Patrick Hoffman’s second book, but it is a wonderful model of how to write a complex and controlled work without leaving loose ends, lingering too long in one phase, or letting the reader lose interest. The novel presents us with a drug cartel that stretches around the world like a giant organism. A single disturbance in one location causes violent and self-protective reactions in each of the other locations, like reflexes of the giant organism’s body. The novel is a brilliant study of cause and effect. Hoffman portrays a world that is dangerous and dark, but every bit of it makes sense.

This is a risky choice because the author is my old university colleague and later television writing partner, to whom I’ve been married for 41 years. I feel comfortable about it because of the number of fine British and American writers who have recommended this and her earlier books. I picked it because it’s the first novel I’ve read that makes a credible artistic attempt to grasp the experience of the current Pandemic. It’s a murder mystery that takes place during those first few months, when what was happening in the world seemed unthinkable, going out meant breaking a lockdown, and contact with anyone might be fatal. The amateur investigator, a young woman with an aimless and undisciplined past, takes a deep expedition into death, and it galvanizes her into taking charge and being really alive. 

I love the way there is a mystery within a mystery. A group of actors is staging a play for the benefit of the passengers on a transcontinental train trip across Canada. The protagonist, who is undercover and posing as a waiter, befriends the lead actor and takes a page out of Hamlet, using the play to pressure the villain into making a mistake and incriminating himself. Accurate details about working as a waiter lend a sense of ‘David versus Goliath’ to the storyline.

Again, I imagine most people are more familiar with the film adaptation of this novel, which kicked off the long-running Jack Ryan franchise. (Trivia break: name all 5 different actors who have portrayed the character on screen!)

And again, when I cracked open the book after seeing the movie, I was (wait for it) TECHNO-THRILLED (see what I did there?) to learn all about nuclear submarine operations. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details, and one little thing can either make or ruin a spy’s day on the job.

I was inspired by his descriptions. He captures the ethos of a place, the unique attributes that elevate mere locations to sensory experiences. I use the five senses as a guideline when writing descriptions. Tony Hillerman can place the reader in the scene, and I’m inspired to accomplish the same thing.