100 books like The Bureau and the Mole

Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to think of spies as cloak-and-dagger types driving Jaguars and carrying machine pistols and exploding gadgets. But spying really is the second-oldest profession. Ann Blackman’s beautifully told narrative of Washington socialite Rose O’Neal Greenhow, who became a highly successful Confederate spy during the Civil War, is a good reminder that a smart, deceptive human – female or male – can change the course of wars.

This book is an Edgar-winning masterwork of narrative nonfiction, a blistering account of Cold War espionage committed by a pair of twentysomethings in Southern California. Christopher Boyce, who had access to CIA files while working for the defense contractor TRW, secretly copied files and gave them to his friend Andrew Daulton Lee, who sold them to Soviet officials in Mexico City. The United States disrupted the plot and sent Boyce and Lee to prison. 

My publisher sent author Robert Lindsey an advance copy of my book, who wrote such a flattering blurb about it that I felt the need to thank him. We met in Carmel, California, where Lindsey signed my copy of The Falcon and the Snowman. Coincidentally, I later got to know Chris Boyce as I wrote stories about him in The Oregonian after his release from prison.

Pete Earley, one of America’s best spy writers, authored two excellent books on espionage: Confessions of a Spy and Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring. But for my money, the Ames book is the better of them because Earley – one helluva reporter – talked his way into a long series of exclusive interviews with the disgraced CIA officer.

Ames, who betrayed to Moscow the identities of Russian spies secretly working for the U.S. (causing at least 10 of them to be killed), gave Earley more than 50 hours of his time behind bars. He did not race to print with the story (as other authors had), but interviewed Ames’s Russian handlers and the brilliant CIA team that identified him as the mole in its midst.

David Wise became the first Western journalist to interview former CIA officer Edward Lee Howard, who defected to Moscow on the KGB’s dime. Wise penned a slew of excellent nonfiction spy books before his death in 2018, but I believe his keen-eyed narrative skills and vivid portrait of Cold War espionage make The Spy Who Got Away his best in show.

Wise recounts Howard’s career in the CIA, which fired him in 1983 for alleged drug abuse, and the FBI’s subsequent investigation of his illegal ties to the KGB. But his story takes a cool, cinematic turn as he describes the way Howard slipped FBI surveillance – propping up a dummy in the front passenger seat of a speeding 1979 Oldsmobile – and jumping out of the car to escape to Moscow.

This book is a fascinating and comprehensive account of one of the worst intelligence disasters in U.S. history. It is about Robert Hanssen, the late FBI Agent and Russian turncoat who was corrupt, sullen, imperious, and endlessly fascinating.

We know about a lot of his misdeeds and personality disorders because of this groundbreaking book by David Wise. David is a brilliant and accomplished espionage writer who died in 2018. He explains how the FBI spent $7 million to steal Hanssen’s personnel files from the KGB. Those secret Russian files led directly to Hanssen’s 2001 arrest.

Wise also conducted exclusive interviews with the psychiatrist who met Hanssen in his jail cell more than 30 times. Finally, Wise chronicles Hanssen’s bizarre sex life, including the hidden video camera he used to record his wife, so he could share the videos with his best friend. 

If you’re like me, you can’t consume enough news about Robert Hanssen, the FBI Special Agent who sold out his country to Russia.

Elaine Shannon, the longtime Time Magazine correspondent, and Ann Blackman relied on more than 150 interviews in telling Hanssen’s story of deceit and depravity. They reveal the dramatic story of an ex-KGB officer stealing Hanssen’s KGB file, Hanssen’s obsession with kinky sex, and his (ironic) affiliation with the ultra-conservative and moralistic Catholic society, Opus Dei.

Still a great read, all these years later.

The book is a remarkable one amongst contemporary spy thrillers. In spy thrillers, all agents have difficult missions to accomplish. However, in The Eleventh Commandment, in addition to the extremely challenging assignment in a high-security environment, the protagonist has another dangerous enemy to tackle, and strangely, that is his own boss! Then there is this unique crisis in the protagonist’s personal and family life. Only Archer’s master storytelling abilities could have woven these complex dimensions together to present an excellent and memorable thriller. 

This action-packed spy thriller kept me on edge from the first chapter mostly due to the beautiful prose, but also because it depicts the CIA in an accessible way. The book taught me to analyze people based on not their words or actions, but their intentions. Diving headfirst into the political hierarchy of the esteemed agency, this book highlights that no one—especially the co-worker you sit next to and eat lunch with every day—can be trusted. Fun and fast-paced, Red Widow drops you in a body of water and just when you think you’re in a swimming pool, you find out you’re in the ocean. 

During my time working in the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, we would "throw out a line to see if anything bit." By that, I mean we'd leak information into the terrorism community to see their response.

That response often determined which direction we'd take an investigation. That's what the plot of The Russia House does. The CIA and Britain's Secret Intelligence Service get a taste of information from an inside Russian military source, but can it be believed?

You’re a CIA analyst, well respected and regarded by your employer, married for ten years and a mother of four children.

At work one day, you are directed to hack a Russian criminal’s computer. It’s not an easy task but you eventually succeed and are stunned to find details and photographs of 5 deep-cover Russian spies living in America looking back at you. One of which is your husband.

This is a great start to a novel that races along with our main character thrown into a maelstrom of lies, loyalty, and impossible choices.

Brilliant stuff.