The most recommended espionage books

Henry Landau’s story is a favorite because it visualized for me the brilliance of WWI espionage. During the war, Landau worked for the British Secret Intelligence Service in neutral Holland and collaborated with the resistance group “La Dame Blanche” or “The White Lady” in occupied Belgium, who covertly provided him with intelligence to aid the Allies against Germany. They created innocuous “grocery lists” – a code for how many German troops, horses, and artillery were sighted at Belgium’s train stations, and “letterboxes” used to pass intel so as to safeguard each cell of agents from capture. I was thrilled to discover this “White Lady” network of mostly noncombatants—women and children—whose ingenuity in surveillance was well before its time.

Nelson DeMille is at the top of his game in Wild Fire.

The writing crackles throughout the novel as alpha male Detective John Corey pursues a clan of rich industrialists bent on revenging 9/11 even if it means destroying American cities and populations to accomplish their goals.

If you’re looking for fun and spycraft all in one place, this is the book for you.

This isn’t just the story of the first cyberweapon ever launched by one country against another; it’s actually two detective stories woven together.

I loved how Zetter blends the stories of the cybersecurity companies trying to figure out how it was discovered and what the cyberweapon did, together with the efforts of the International Atomic Energy Agency to track down the weird anomalies popping up in Iran’s nuclear program.

This book is a lot like The Godfather in terms of storytelling. You don’t need to know what a “Zero Day” is to get something out of it.

I was introduced to Clive Cussler novels in an airport while waiting for a connection. I've been hooked ever since.

The piece de resistance of Dirk Pitt's NUMA adventures, Inca Gold, stands out for its haunting authenticity as it draws readers into a world where, thanks to Clive's brilliance, his alternate takes on history are all too plausible.

Dirk and the NUMA team that backs and believes in him never disappoint with stories that keep you guessing til the dramatic end.

Based on an unprecedented treasure trove of documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union by former intelligence officer Vasily Mitrokhin, this book demonstrated the KGB operations used in an attempt to destabilise the West during the Cold War - disinformation, forgery of documents, honey trapping, smears, surveillance and recruiting agents of influence and politicians in the UK, NATO countries and the USA.

I am recommending The Mitrokhin Archive because it is based on primary documents.  So many books about espionage are based on memories and speculation, while the Mitrokhin Archive's value is that its assertions and revelations are based on actual KGB documents. 

And so this book was indispensable for my research for my book.

We first meet Lou Galloway in a bar in Mexico.

Lou is a ‘scorned dreamer’ chewed up and spat out from an acting career in L.A. But when he shares a drink with a stranger wearing a fedora hat; this seemingly chance encounter sets Lou on the adventure of a lifetime. Mistaken for a rogue assassin known as ‘El Flamingo’, he is swept into a dangerous world of Latin-American espionage, where he only has his wits to survive.

El Flamingo is a perfectly crafted sunset-noir novel that engages from the opening page to the satisfying conclusion. Lour Galloway is an unforgettable character full of self-deprecating wit, and the plot is the perfect blend of action, intrigue, and romance, all with an exotic Latin-American vibe.

This is the story of a dreamer reaching for the impossible, and it’s a tale infused with heart and soul.

Thanks to Hollywood adaptations and sometimes a greedy publisher, a great series can diminish as time passes. But that doesn’t change how cool the original was.

I love the setup of a man waking on a sailing vessel with no memory, only to discover his identity as super espionage agent. The mystery of the scenario and the intrigue as Bourne unravels his own personhood was so well done in this first book (and the first film was an excellent adaptation), and it is worth revisiting.

The decade between the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the Global War of Terrorism was a decade of uncertainty for the U.S. intelligence community and an important part of intelligence history. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the reduction in national security budgets raised numerous questions about the purpose, focus, and funding of intelligence organizations during the 1990s. Loch Johnson’s book is an excellent and essential read to understand this period. One of the foremost intelligence scholars, Johnson also served on the Aspin-Brown Commission that considered the future of U.S. intelligence after the Cold War (he also previously served on the 1975 Church and Pike Commission). A commission covered extensively in this book.

The Message is a novel about five codebreakers and one traitor. Set in China during World War II when the Chinese resistance challenged the Japanese backed puppet government, this is a complex counterintelligence novel, written by a Chinese storyteller, who is no stranger to the Chinese intelligence services. By telling the same story from two different perspectives, Mai Jia, as a colleague recently suggested, intentionally problematized the truth because both versions were plausible. I recommend this book because it provides insight into the multilayered intelligence story of wartime China, it is one of the few books on this topic, and it was written in China and published outside of the country with permission from the government.

Once upon a time, I was a professional librarian, and I remember thinking what a perfect placement for a spy. This would make the perfect setting for a spy novel, so imagine my surprise when this novel came along! Martin has created a fine period piece in this as well, and the reader is walking through scenes from World War II and experiencing this world through the protagonist’s eyes. I love books and films that have been set in the past, and I highly recommend this one.