Books
25 of the best spy thrillers
We can’t resist a dip into the mysterious world of the spy thriller. With secrets, lies, conspiracies and undercover plots abound, these books span the national and the international, blending the personal and the political and showing how they are inextricably linked.
From the classic to the contemporary, here are some of the best spy thrillers around.
The best spy thriller books
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
In Casino Royale, the first of Ian Fleming’s 007 adventures, a game of cards is James Bond’s only chance to bring down Le Chiffre, French communist and paymaster of the Soviet murder organization SMERSH. But Bond soon discovers that there is far more at stake than money.
This is a book that’s packed will thrills and suspense. It’s an incredibly satisfying read that showcases everything we know and love about the Bond stories – chilling, sadistic villains, sensuous, fiery love affairs and the smooth, sophisticated secret agent himself.
The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen
The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen
Maggie Bird lives a quiet life as a retiree in a seaside town. She never talks about her past life as a former spy. But when an unidentified body is left on Maggie’s doorway, she knows it’s a calling card from old times. Enter the ‘Martini Club’ – Maggie’s group of former spy friends. Together, they must solve the mystery and stay one step ahead of law enforcement.
This is the first instalment in a brand-new espionage series from Tess Gerritsen, author of the beloved Rizzoli and Isles detective series.
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
This book by former RAF pilot and investigative journalist Frederick Forsyth is one of the most celebrated thrillers ever written. It’s intelligent, chilling and 100% unputdownable.
It is 1963 and an anonymous Englishman has been hired by the O.A.S. to murder General de Galle. A failed attempt means the target will be nearly impossible to get to. But this latest plot involves a lethal weapon: an assassin of legendary talent. Known only as The Jackal, this remorseless and deadly killer must be stopped – but how do you track a man who exists in name alone?
Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré
Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré
Nat, a 47 year-old veteran of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, believes his years as an agent runner are over. But with the growing threat from Moscow Centre, the office has one more job for him – one that will take him down a path of political anger that will ensnare those closest to him.
Agent Running in the Field is a chilling portrait of our time – in part heartbreaking, in part darkly humorous – told with unflagging tension by one of the greatest storytellers of our age.
Argylle by Elly Conway
Argylle by Elly Conway
This globe-trotting spy thriller inspired a star-studded blockbuster, starring Henry Cavill, Dua Lipa, Samuel L. Jackson, and others. The film’s director Matthew Vaugn called the book ‘the most incredible spy franchise since Ian Fleming.’ High praise indeed.
In the book, a Russian magnate tries to restore a nation to greatness, causing a chain of events that could have fatal consequences. It’s CIA agent Frances Coffey’s mission to stop him, with a little help from a rogue agent called Argylle.
The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
He was dragged from the sea, his body riddled with bullets, a frame of microfilm surgically implanted beneath his skin and evidence that plastic surgery has altered his face. A number on the film negative that leads to a bank account in Zurich, four million dollars and a name for the amnesiac: Jason Bourne.
This is how we first meet Bourne – a man now running for his life with an unknown past and an uncertain future, the target of assassins and at the heart of a deadly puzzle. He’s fighting for survival and no one can help him – except the one woman who once wanted to escape him…
An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris
An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris
Paris, 1895: army officer Georges Picquart watches a convicted spy, Alfred Dreyfus, being publicly humiliated in front of a baying crowd. Dreyfus is exiled for life while Picquart is promoted to run the intelligence unit that tracked him down. But when Picquart discovers that secrets are still being handed over to the Germans, he’s drawn into a dangerous labyrinth of deceit and corruption that threatens not just his honour but his life…
This is a gripping, unmissable thriller. Robert Harris manages to turn fact into fiction with extensive research and quality writing, producing an engaging, compelling, believable story.
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
Perhaps more than any other book The Thirty-Nine Steps has set the pattern for the story of the chase for a wanted man. It’s a tense tale complete with secret codes, undercover agents, and murder – everything you could want from a good spy thriller.
Adventurer Richard Hannay is bored with his London life – until a spy is murdered in his flat, just days after having warned Hannay of an assassination plot that could plunge Britain into a war with Germany. An obvious suspect for the police and an easy target for the killers, Hannay picks up the trail left by the assassins, fleeing to Scotland, where he must use all his wits to stay one step ahead of the game and warn the government before it is too late.
The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
The Hunt for Red October is the runaway bestseller that launched Tom Clancy’s phenomenal career and introduced readers to hero Jack Ryan. Authentic and hugely thrilling, it’s one book we can’t recommend enough.
Beneath the chill Atlantic waters, Russia’s ultra-secret missile submarine is heading west. The Americans want her. The Russians want her back. With all-out war only seconds away, the superpowers race across the ocean on the most desperate mission of a lifetime. The most incredible chase in history is on.
I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes
I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes
Pilgrim is the former head of a secret espionage unit for US intelligence. Before he disappeared into anonymous retirement, he wrote the definitive book on forensic criminal investigation – a book that will come back to haunt him. It will help NYPD detective Ben Bradley track him down. It will take him to a rundown New York hotel room and the body of a woman. It is a textbook murder – and Pilgrim wrote the book.
What begins as an unusual and challenging case will become a terrifying race-against-time across the world to save America from oblivion.
At Risk by Stella Rimington
At Risk by Stella Rimmington
For MI5 officer Liz Carlyle, the nagging complications of her private life are quickly forgotten at Monday’s counter-terrorism meeting. An invisible may have entered mainland Britain. With each passing hour the danger increases. But as Liz desperately sifts through the incoming intelligence, she finally realises a truth that could prove deadly: her ability to get inside her enemy’s head is the only hope of averting disaster…
As former Director General of MI5, Stella Rimington’s books are packed full of authentic detail. A must-read for spy thriller fans.
Crisis by Frank Gardner
Crisis by Frank Gardner
Introducing Luke Carlton – ex-Special Boat Service commando, now under contract to MI6 for some of its most dangerous missions. Sent into the Colombian jungle to investigate the murder of a British intelligence officer, hunted down, captured, tortured and on the run from one of South America’s most powerful drugs cartels, Luke is in a life-or-death race to prevent a disaster on a truly terrifying scale.
Fly-on-the-wall insights, coupled with a fast pace and tension that’s electric, guarantee Frank Gardner’s debut a place in our list.
A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming
A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming
Six weeks before she’s due to become the first female head of MI6, Amelia Levene disappears without a trace. Disgraced ex-agent Thomas Kell is brought in from the cold with orders to find her. Tracking her through France and North Africa, Kell embarks on a dangerous voyage, shadowed by foreign intelligence services. On this far from home soil, the rules of the game are entirely different – and the consequences worse than anyone imagines.
This is the first in Charles Cumming’s Thomas Kell series and an absolutely top drawer thriller – a cleverly constructed, well-written novel full of twists and turns.
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
Set in an Edwardian London underworld of terrorist bombers, spies, grotesques and fanatics, Conrad’s dark, unsettling masterpiece asks if we ever really know others, or ourselves.
The classic story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894 masterminded by Verloc, a Russian spy working for the police, and ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho. What Conrad does best is delve into the heart of human character – what is it that motivates us, makes us love, hate and take action, and how society shapes us.
The Sandpit by Nicholas Shakespeare
The Sandpit by Nicholas Shakespeare
When John Dyer returns to Oxford from Brazil with his young son, he doesn’t expect to find themselves in danger. But the rainy streets of this English city turn out to be just as treacherous as those he used to walk in the favelas.
Who do you trust with a secret that could destroy the world? Readers of William Boyd and John le Carré will find themselves engrossed in this brilliantly crafted, compelling novel that grips from the very beginning.
The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
Crime novelist Charles Latimer is travelling in Istanbul when he first hears of the mysterious Dimitrios – a master criminal, long wanted by the law, whose body has just been fished out of the Bosphorus. Fascinated by the story, Latimer decides to retrace Dimitrios’ steps across Europe to gather material for a new book. But as he discovers more about his subject’s shadowy history, fascination tips over into obsession – and soon, his own life is on the line.
Clever, authentic and packed with intrigue, this is a first class classic that paved the way for modern espionage thrillers.
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Into the intrigue and violence of 1950s Indo-China comes CIA agent Alden Pyle, a young American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious ‘Third Force’. As his naive optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, finds it hard to stand aside and watch. But even as he intervenes he wonders why: for the greater good, or something altogether more complicated?
This is a complex and multi-layered novel exploring love, innocence, and morality in Vietnam and it will stay with you long after you’ve turned the final page.
Secret Service by Tom Bradby
Secret Service by Tom Bradby
Kate Henderson’s life seems perfectly ordinary. But she is in fact a senior MI6 officer, who right now is nursing the political equivalent of a nuclear bomb. Kate’s most recent mission yielded the intelligence that the British Prime Minister has cancer – and that one of the leading candidates to replace him may be a Russian agent of influence. Up against the clock to uncover the Russian mole, Kate risks everything to get to the truth.
This is a fresh-from-the-headlines thriller from journalist and ITV News anchor Tom Bradby for fans of Homeland and Bodyguard.
SS-GB by Len Deighton
SS-GB by Len Deighton
Recently adapted by the BBC, this is a spy story quite different from any other, imagining Britain under German rule following World War Two.
In February 1941 British Command surrendered to the Nazis. Churchill has been executed, the King is in the Tower and the SS are in Whitehall. However, it’s ‘business as usual’ at Scotland Yard run by the SS when Detective Inspector Archer is assigned to a routine murder case. But when SS Standartenfuhrer Huth arrives from Berlin with orders from the great Himmler himself to supervise the investigation, the resourceful Archer finds himself caught up in a high level, all action, espionage battle.
Need to Know by Karen Cleveland
Need to Know by Karen Cleveland
The Couple Next Door meets Homeland in this contemporary novel that blends spy thriller and domestic drama perfectly. Penned by a former CIA analyst, the story oozes with an authenticity that sets it apart from the rest.
Vivian Miller is a dedicated CIA counter-intelligence analyst assigned to uncover Russian sleeper cells in the United States. After accessing the computer of a potential Russian operative, Vivian stumbles on a secret dossier of deep-cover agents within America’s borders. A few clicks later, everything that matters to her is threatened – her job, her marriage, her children. Because one of the agents is her husband.
Slow Horses by Mick Herron
Slow Horses by Mick Herron
Banished to Slough House from the ranks of achievers at Regent’s Park for various crimes of drugs and drunkenness, lechery and failure, politics and betrayal, Jackson Lamb’s misfit crew of highly trained joes don’t run ops, they push paper. But you don’t stop being a spook just because you’re no longer in the game.
Slow Horses is the first book in this terrific series that just gets better and better. Clever and compelling, with a great cast of characters and sharp wit, this is a hugely entertaining read.
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
Inspired by a real-life investigation, this thriller by the writer of BBC Two’s London Spy revolves around an ambitious secret police officer, Leo Demidov, who believes he’s helping to build the perfect society in 1950s Stalinist Russia. But when he uncovers evidence of a killer at large – a threat the state won’t admit exists – Demidov must risk everything to expose the truth.
Dark, brutal and brimming with tension, Child 44 will hook you in and refuse to let go.
The Winter Agent by Gareth Rubin
The Winter Agent by Gareth Rubin
A gripping thriller set in occupied France, based on a shocking historical conspiracy that reaches the very top of the British establishment.
January, 1944. A bitter winter grips occupied France, where Marc Reece leads an SOE circuit facing deadly risks, operating in secret to sabotage the German war effort. But Marc has a second mission, secret from even his fellow agents. Everyone knows that D-Day is coming, and that the hours following the Allied landings will decide the war – and every last scrap of information he can provide might make all the difference in the fate of the western world. But when the circuit is ambushed – with deadly consequences – Marc realises there may be a spy in their ranks, putting at risk everything they’ve been fighting for.
Killing Eve: Codename Villanelle by Luke Jennings
Killing Eve: Codename Villanelle by Luke Jennings
BBC One’s Killing Eve captivated us all when it landed on our small screens back in 2018 – but have you picked up the pacy, addictive books behind the series yet?
Following Villanelle, a ruthlessly trained Russian assassin, and Eve Polastri, the MI5 agent who hunts her, in an entertaining, witty and often bloody cat-and-mouse game, the books are a refreshing addition to the spy thriller genre, mixing the personal and political to great effect.
Atomic Love by Jennie Fields
Atomic Love by Jennie Fields
Rosalind Porter has always defied expectations – both in her work as a physicist designing the atomic bomb, and in her love affair with coworker Thomas Weaver. Five years after the end of both, the FBI comes knocking. Agent Charlie Szydlo wants Rosalind to spy on Weaver, whom the FBI suspects of selling nuclear secrets to Russia. Rosalind’s final assignment launches her on a mission to find the truth – no matter where it leads.
Blending historical fiction, spy thriller and emotional drama, Atomic Love examines our fiercest loyalties, deepest desires and the transforming power of forgiveness.
Have we missed any of the best spy thrillers? Let us know in the comments below!
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Jason Matthews is an honorable mention here, too
“Satori” by Don Winslow.
Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came In From Cold was the first real ‘spy’ novel I ever read. In my opinion, it hasn’t been surpassed.
“I Am Pilgrim” isn’t one of the best 25 spy thrillers in this or any other universe. The fact it gets mentioned when Gerald Seymour, Ted Allbeury and William Boyd are overlooked makes me question this list.
Terry Hayes is on the list twice, as he co-wrote ‘Argylle’. The pseudonym ‘ Elly Conway’ being the fictional lead character and spy author in the film ‘Argylle’
Love Slow Horses and it’s a great TV show on Apple with Gary Oldman.
A Spy at Evening by Donald James is hugely underrated and equally recommended.
And Henning Mankell deserves a pride of place, though a detective rather than spies is his protagonist.
Frederick Forsyth “Cobra” is probably the best modern Spy/ Detective type book I have read. Certainly worth a mention. IMHO
Alan Furst is a notable omission.
Alan Judd novels also deserve a place in this list.
Alan Furst’s Night Soldiers is a classic of exceptional prose. The all time best spy novel for me has to be Terry Hayes’s I Am Pilgrim. It grabs you from page one and does not let go. Charles McCarry is so under the radar. The first paragraph of Tears of Autumn is one of the best opening paragraph in the genre.
The Little Drummer Girl by John LeCarre is wonderful, the movie version is great, too.
Funeral in Berlin by Len Deighton is a classic, also a great movie version.
How about The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy, a great read.
How about daniel Silva spy bestsellers & Erskine childers riddle of the sands?
I believe all the authors listed by you and their books are fiction. There’s a British author, Nicholas Anderson, a retired SIS (MI6) intelligence officer, who lists his titles as fiction because the UK government redacts large portions of his manuscripts for clearance to publish. As a result his lawyers advised him to reverse describing his books as non-fiction and to entitle them as fiction. I’ve read all four so far – brilliant real stuff! – but, in my opinion the book industry should really allow a new category called faction. Recommend with you want the real thing – all the titles begin with NOC (non-official cover)!
Tears of Autumn by Charles McCarry is excellent. The entire Paul Christopher series, starting with The Miernik Dossier are fantastic spy thrillers.
I am a fan of Alan Furst. I also enjoy Michael Russell’s “City of….” series which give an interesting Irish perspective.
Agree with furst, although his recent novel was poor by his standards I thought.
I certainly agree with the novels you’ve mentioned that I’ve read … which is over a third of them. But how could you leave out Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp series? I picked up “American Assassin” in an airport a few years back and was so mesmerized that I have since read all of Flynn’s novels at least twice. Not quite in Flynn’s league, but close, is Brad Thor’s Scot Harvath series. You mentioned the Bourne novels by Robert Ludlum, which are, of course, fascinating. But most of Ludlum’s novels are great reads for anyone interested in espionage thrillers. I look forward to discovering some of the books you have recommended here that I haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading.
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith deserves a place among the best.
Yes, you failed to mention any of the novels by either Charles McCarry or Alan Furst. I, at least, think McCarry is the only writer of spy novels arguably the equal of Le Carre. He had a similar background, that of an agent with the CIA, rather than MI6, for many years before he took up writing fiction, and his novels thus have Le Carre’s sense of verisimilitude. In addition, as is Le Carre, he is a superb writer, possessing both narrative force and and a clear, direct prose style. His The Tears of Autumn is simply outstanding, on a level with The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Alan Furst, whose novels are are set in the period shortly before the advent of World War II, is a master of atmosphere and detail. His Kingdom of Shadows is excellent, as indeed are all of them.