Fans pick 100 books like The Spy Who Changed History

Knowing about Noor Inayat Khan’s life is crucial to understanding why people become spies; her story is utterly startling.

I learned about Noor (codename Madeleine) while doing research in London for my fifth book. One of the people I interviewed was well-informed about the women who were trained as spies in WWII for Winston Churchill’s Special Operations Executive (SOE).

During that trip, someone left a copy of her biography, Spy Princess (a 2006 British publication), for me at the hotel front desk; to this day, I don’t know who. I read it on the flight back to the U.S. and was immensely moved by Noor’s motivations and her shocking bravery, especially after she faced the Gestapo and was sent to a concentration camp. 

I chose this book as it explores the difficult, murky world of the double agent, that of Colonel Oleg Gordievsky of the KGB. I could have chosen any one of half a dozen of Ben’s books for great nonfiction writing. However, this story is set in a wonderful period for the espionage lover: the Cold War of the 1980s. A rollicking yarn that I think is one the best escape from Russia stories there is. I have to say this book constantly amazed me.

Indeed, I owe a debt to Ben, as his writing inspired me to write my own nonfiction espionage books, of which I have written four to date.

I have read several John Le Carre novels, but I chose this one because of its ingenious depiction of the psychological traps of spydom.

It’s a satire, and as it moves through a mire of lies and deceit, it digs deeply into the twists and turns of the life of a tailor seemingly forced by bribery and blackmail to be a spy. His only freedom is to release his creativity into a vast new domain of endless deceit, in which, among other things, he drenches his handler with lies.

The story is brimming with surprises, including the fact that there’s no violence, which is one of the reasons I liked it so much. I read this one twice, years ago, and both times, I could barely take a break.

This book taught me how to write a thriller. I’ll admit I’m obsessive. I’ve not only read this book—and watched the movie—many times, but I read everything I could find about how Follet wrote this novel, his method of writing, etc. 

As I do in my novels, he breaks some of the so-called rules. His “bad guys” are real and engaging characters. He paces his novels, intertwining characters and storylines. He builds tension. And he mixes real history and real locations with his fictional characters in a way that brings them to life. 

Most of all, as do I, he loves plot, conflict, and storytelling. 

It’s too easy when reading Ludlum to get caught up in the Bourne Trilogy and overlook the author’s other great political thrillers. For me, The Matarese Circle best captures a theme that appears in most of Ludlum’s work – “We shouldn’t always trust our own intelligence community.”  

In The Matarese Circle, two disaffected covert agents—one American and one Soviet—team up to identify members of an international league of assassins bent on achieving world domination to promote commercial gain. This corpse-laden, globetrotting chase is one of Ludlum’s finest. 

It is rare for a KGB spy to reveal so many secrets about the Soviet Union and Russian intelligence operations in the West and so this book is a revelation. 

Kalugin was a KGB officer based in the USA in the 1970s and he describes all their dirty tricks - fake letters, disinformation, honey trapping, and even attempts to bug the US Congress.

Before stumbling across this memoir, while doing the research for my next novel, I had no idea that the Cold War saw German Communist spies living in the USA - but come to think of it, why shouldn’t they have existed on the other side of the Iron Curtain? Barsky’s story blew me away: he was sent by the KGB to the States as a sleeper agent. What “broke” him was not his challenging profession, but the love for his child — he eventually had two families, one in East Germany with a wife who knew about his true identity - and another one in the States, with a wife who didn’t.

He had a son with the German and a daughter with his Latin-American wife in the US. He wasn’t there when his son was born, but witnessed the birth of his daughter. When the Cold War ended and… show more.

This book is a detailed description of the MI5 investigation of an undercover KGB couple by the names of Peter and Helen Kroger. In reality, they were American citizens named Morris and Lona Cohen. 

They were important members of the Rosenberg spy ring that stole the atomic secret. They fled the country just in time to escape execution. In 1954 they were redeployed to the UK to gather information concerning the nuclear submarine research done by the UK Navy off the isle of Portland. 

This book gives the reader insights into the complex police work needed to unmask deep-cover agents. After 8 years in jail, the Cohens were released and spent the remainder of their life in Moscow. They were part of the team that prepared me for my mission as a deep cover agent.

Starting in World War II, American cryptanalysts broke Soviet codes and determined that hundreds of Americans working for the Soviet Union were active within the federal government during the New Deal and throughout the Second World War. Code named Venona, this operation was a closely guarded secret until declassification in 1996. When these intercepts were combined with information acquired from Soviet archives after the collapse of the USSR, they revealed not only a massive penetration of American government, science, and industry by Soviet spies but an American Communist Party that had assisted in these efforts, serving as an arm of Soviet intelligence. In other words (quoting American Communist Party member Alfred Bernstein), “[Joseph] McCarthy was right.” “The system was loaded with Communists.”

What a title, Ace of Spies. I wish I had thought of that one, and Sydney Reilly was that. A historical figure who led a charmed life and remains something of a mystery to this day, where did he come from? And how did he die? He comes from one of my favorite periods of history: the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the Civil War. There is a romantic quality about him, yet he can be utterly ruthless. I find him the perfect spy.

The background is so authentic. Lockhart served in Naval Intelligence during World War II and is the son of R.H. Bruce Lockhart, who knew Reilly and was in Russia at the same time. So, he had a wealth of experience to draw on. Incidentally, I loved the TV series as well, which starred Sam Neill as Sydney Reilly.