Here are 100 books that Victor in the Rubble fans have personally recommended if you like
Victor in the Rubble.
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Every day, we hear about crises worldwide and wonder what our government is doing to keep us safe and prosperous. Reality is often very different from what we see on the news. I was lucky to serve as a senior State Department diplomat and witnessed how the American government machine reacts to wars, coups, and political upheavals. Insights from the inside gave me both comfort (about the high quality of US officials), fear (about how many serious threats we face), and exasperation (at how messy things often get). When I left government, I wanted to share some of those frustrations and found fiction was the best vehicle.
A young FBI agent finds herself in West Africa in the 1980s just as the Cold War drives everything the US government does. She’s pulled into a covert plot to depose a communist-leaning politician while struggling with her own demons. I loved the story because it pulled together so much: politics, history, intrigue, and romance.
I spent 21 years in the Central Intelligence Agency as a linguist, analyst, and speechwriter. It was a love-hate relationship. I found the culture of the place fascinating and sometimes maddening. The intellectual challenge was addictive. I met some of the best people I’ve ever known and a few of the worst. I learned about high stakes and moral ambiguity, intellectual integrity and bald careerism, selfless service, and rollicking arrogance. I discovered that the intelligence world is a world apart yet an eerily accurate reflection of broader society. I’ve chosen books written by authors who spent time in intelligence work and crafted novels that define and sometimes defy the spy genre.
Early in my career, I realized that 1.) Spy bureaucracies lend themselves to satire, and 2.) Inventing information to sell to a government is a line of work as old as espionage. Graham Greene leverages these truths in the grandaddy of satiric spy novels.
His protagonist, James Wormold, is a vacuum cleaner salesman who becomes a reluctant employee of MI6. Wormold fabricates assets, reports, and expense accounts to boost his lagging sales income and spoil his daughter. In the process, he trips over the uneven border between invention and reality and almost gets himself killed.
MI6’s man in Havana is Wormold, a former vacuum-cleaner salesman turned reluctant secret agent out of economic necessity. To keep his job, he files bogus reports based on Charles Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs. Then his stories start coming disturbingly true…
First published in 1959 against the backdrop of the Cold War, Our Man in Havana remains one of Graham Greene’s most widely read novels. It is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a political satire of government intelligence that still resonates today. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by…
Every day, we hear about crises worldwide and wonder what our government is doing to keep us safe and prosperous. Reality is often very different from what we see on the news. I was lucky to serve as a senior State Department diplomat and witnessed how the American government machine reacts to wars, coups, and political upheavals. Insights from the inside gave me both comfort (about the high quality of US officials), fear (about how many serious threats we face), and exasperation (at how messy things often get). When I left government, I wanted to share some of those frustrations and found fiction was the best vehicle.
The first in a series, this espionage thriller was written by a former CIA spymaster who uses his experience to tell the story of a Russian seductress targeting US officials. I was drawn in by the multi-layered protagonist, while the little details of spycraft enrich the plot and its authenticity.
THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE starring Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton and Jeremy Irons.
Dominika Egorov, former prima ballerina, is sucked into the heart of Putin's Russia, the country she loved, as the twists and turns of a betrayal and counter-betrayal unravel.
American Nate Nash, idealistic and ambitious, handles the double agent, codenamed MARBLE, considered one of CIA's biggest assets. He needs to keep his identity secret for as long as the mole can keep supplying golden information.
Will Dominika be able to unmask MARBLE, or will the mission see her faith destroyed in the country she has always passionately defended?
Every day, we hear about crises worldwide and wonder what our government is doing to keep us safe and prosperous. Reality is often very different from what we see on the news. I was lucky to serve as a senior State Department diplomat and witnessed how the American government machine reacts to wars, coups, and political upheavals. Insights from the inside gave me both comfort (about the high quality of US officials), fear (about how many serious threats we face), and exasperation (at how messy things often get). When I left government, I wanted to share some of those frustrations and found fiction was the best vehicle.
Winslow is one of my all-time favorite authors. His epic three-book series about an American DEA agent and his Mexican narco-boss nemesis starts here. I was riveted through the next two books, too, but I’ve added this one to my list because of the subtle ways I learned that the politics of the DEA are so much like what I faced at the State Department. Bonus: the narrator, Ray Porter, makes a great story even better.
'Breathtaking' JEREMY CLARKSON 'Winslow's masterpiece (so far) ... should have a place on every crime freak's bookshelf. Superb' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY _______________________ A brilliant page-turning thriller of power and revenge on the front lines of the drug war.
Drug lord Miguel Angel Barrera is head of the Mexican drug federacion, responsible for millions of dollars worth of cocaine traffic into the US and the torture and murder of those who stand in its way. His nephew, Adan Barrera, is his worthy successor.
Art Keller is a US government operative, so determined to obtain revenge for a murdered colleague that his…
I spent 21 years in the Central Intelligence Agency as a linguist, analyst, and speechwriter. It was a love-hate relationship. I found the culture of the place fascinating and sometimes maddening. The intellectual challenge was addictive. I met some of the best people I’ve ever known and a few of the worst. I learned about high stakes and moral ambiguity, intellectual integrity and bald careerism, selfless service, and rollicking arrogance. I discovered that the intelligence world is a world apart yet an eerily accurate reflection of broader society. I’ve chosen books written by authors who spent time in intelligence work and crafted novels that define and sometimes defy the spy genre.
This book introduced me to the magnificent John le Carré and his grey man, George Smiley. The atmosphere is cold and heavy, the hero is unassuming, and the light he holds against the darkness is small and flickering.
To unravel the truth, Smiley focuses on one piece of information that doesn’t fit. He doesn’t stop until that last piece falls into place and presents him with a wrenching choice.
After a routine security check by George Smiley, civil servant Samuel Fennan apparently kills himself. When Smiley finds Circus head Maston is trying to blame him for the man's death, he begins his own investigation, meeting with Fennan's widow to find out what could have led him to such desperation. But on the very day that Smiley is ordered off the enquiry he receives an urgent letter from the dead man. Do the East Germans - and their agents - know more about this man's death than the Circus previously imagined?
Le Carre's debut novel, Call for the Dead, introduced…
I spent 21 years in the Central Intelligence Agency as a linguist, analyst, and speechwriter. It was a love-hate relationship. I found the culture of the place fascinating and sometimes maddening. The intellectual challenge was addictive. I met some of the best people I’ve ever known and a few of the worst. I learned about high stakes and moral ambiguity, intellectual integrity and bald careerism, selfless service, and rollicking arrogance. I discovered that the intelligence world is a world apart yet an eerily accurate reflection of broader society. I’ve chosen books written by authors who spent time in intelligence work and crafted novels that define and sometimes defy the spy genre.
I love this book because it doesn’t dress up espionage in a tuxedo or pretend that the world is black and white. Ashenden is a novel about humanity and hard choices rather than high-speed chases and spy gadgetry.
It is about one human lever in a relentless machine. Maugham gives us small tragedies and cold moments alone with the conscience. His literary genius makes a single death off-stage more resonant than an explosion.
When war broke out in 1914, Somerset Maugham was dispatched by the British Secret Service to Switzerland under the guise of completing a play. Multilingual, knowledgeable about many European countries and a celebrated writer, Maugham had the perfect cover, and the assignment appealed to his love of romance, and of the ridiculous. The stories collected in Ashenden are rooted in Maugham's own experiences as an agent, reflecting the ruthlessness and brutality of espionage, its intrigue and treachery, as well as its absurdity.
Every day, we hear about crises worldwide and wonder what our government is doing to keep us safe and prosperous. Reality is often very different from what we see on the news. I was lucky to serve as a senior State Department diplomat and witnessed how the American government machine reacts to wars, coups, and political upheavals. Insights from the inside gave me both comfort (about the high quality of US officials), fear (about how many serious threats we face), and exasperation (at how messy things often get). When I left government, I wanted to share some of those frustrations and found fiction was the best vehicle.
I love Palmer’s thrillers because he writes while he’s still working as a senior US diplomat. I have no idea how he got clearance to publish his books, but they’re fun, light, and absolutely authentic about what it’s like to work in a US embassy overseas. This book is his first, a wild romp that also rings true to my experience inside the State Department.
Global headlines come to life as intrigue and international politics collide in this electrifying debut thriller from Matthew Palmer.
After a devastating experience in Darfur strips Alex Baines, former rising star of the State Department, of his security clearances, he is faced with two choices: spend the rest of his career in visa-stamping limbo or move to the private sector.
On the verge of resigning, he receives a call from his old mentor with an incredible opportunity to start over with a role in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Yet the job isn't quite what Alex imagined it to…
I spent 21 years in the Central Intelligence Agency as a linguist, analyst, and speechwriter. It was a love-hate relationship. I found the culture of the place fascinating and sometimes maddening. The intellectual challenge was addictive. I met some of the best people I’ve ever known and a few of the worst. I learned about high stakes and moral ambiguity, intellectual integrity and bald careerism, selfless service, and rollicking arrogance. I discovered that the intelligence world is a world apart yet an eerily accurate reflection of broader society. I’ve chosen books written by authors who spent time in intelligence work and crafted novels that define and sometimes defy the spy genre.
Despite the title, this is a novel, not a memoir, but it springs from the author’s long experience in the U.S. intelligence community. A colleague once told Thieme, “The only way you can tell the truth is through fiction.” While most spy novels are plot-driven, this book is deeply character-driven.
The highest drama in intelligence work is what it does to the hearts and souls of those who practice it. The struggle to maintain a center amid shifting identities, the fatal failures, and the burden of knowing things that forever alter how one sees the world takes a heavy toll on his protagonist.
"The only way you can tell the truth is through fiction," a veteran NSA senior told Richard Thieme. Mobius: A Memoir does just that. It is about a spy but not a typical “spy novel;” it is a love story but definitely not a “romance." Mobius is a stunning exploration of the impact of a life of deception and professional intelligence work which illuminates the world in which we all now live.
I am the author of the Black Viking and Hellbent Riffraff Thrillers and several volumes of dirty realism poetry. I am also the Founder and editor-in-chief of Bristol Noir, an indie publisher and ezine specialising in curiously dark fiction and crime noir. Since 2017 Bristol Noir has been publishing up-and-coming and best-selling authors from around the world. I’m a writer originally from Northumberland in Northern England. In the late 90s, I studied in Greater Manchester when the IRA bomb went off and during the infamous years of the Hacienda club. I now live in Bristol. I’ve devoted my writing to exploring my heritage and the environments I’ve been in.
Stephen J. Golds is a prolific powerhouse of dirty realist poetry and gritty modern crime fiction. I’ve been lucky enough to work with him on a number of projects now and admire his mind and words greatly.
Say Goodbye When I’m Goneis a breakthrough work of art for someone well-studied in his craft. It’s punchy, atmospheric, and brutal…but also, so sensitively poetic and soulful.
Say Goodbye When I’m Gone, and his other books generally, are prime examples of how a masterwork doesn’t have to be a doorstop in page length. Like The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain, these gems of noir fiction are often in novella format. Soulful, concise, sharp, and lean. Like the best poetry, which Golds happens to be unsurprisingly masterful with too.
1949: Rudy, A Jewish New Yorker snatches a briefcase of cash from a dead man in Los Angeles and runs away from his old life, into the arms of the Boston mob.
1966: Hinako, a young Japanese girl runs away from what she thought was the suffocating conformity of a life in Japan. Aiming to make a fresh start in America, she falls into the grip of a Hawaiian gang dubbed 'The Company'.
1967: Rudy and Hinako's lives collide in the city of Honolulu, where there is nowhere left for either of them to run, and only blood to redeem…
I am a joker at heart and was always the class clown. I currently write on my own humor website, A Man Eating Chicken. I started drawing comics in grade school and grew into writing comedic prose in high school. There was never a goal for any of this; it was all pre-internet, so I didn’t realize that humor could be published anywhere. As I got older, I was able to find some books that really spoke to my sensibilities. The books on this list really showed me the power and possibilities of humor and influenced my own writing.
The Big Book of Hell is the holy grail of dark humor, packaged perfectly in a comic format. Growing up as a sarcastic kid from Brooklyn, this was the first humor book I read that I felt was aimed directly at my sensibilities. It has a very unique “substance-over-style” aesthetic that is striking and somehow managed to become widely identifiable. It dances around subjects, poking fun at the absurdities of the world it was written in. It really showed me that you don’t need to be a conventionally great artist to publish comics and that there is a market for dark humor comics. The book, which reads almost like a variety show, opened my eyes to ways to play with structure of an individual comic and a whole book.
A bumper collection of the classic Life in Hell cartoon strips from the 80s and 90s which were the basis for The Simpsons. Painstakingly assembled and rigorously organized by that master of clutter, Matt Groening, this is not another mini-jumbo, hard-to-read, abreviated compendium in that seemingly endless series of discourses on hell bu a gargantuan historical extravaganza of ten years' worth of the ever-popular Life in Hell cartoon strip, which looks uncannily like The Simpsons if you keep your eyes closed and have a sufficiently fertile imagination. Includes: The birth of Bongo! Binky's arrival in Los Angeles! Akbar and Jeff's…
