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The Prodigal Spy

Joseph Kanon · back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

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❤️

A Perfect Spy

John le Carre · 591 pages

Magnus Pym, ranking diplomat, has vanished, believed defected. The chase is on: for a missing husband, a devoted father, and a secret agent. Pym's life, it is revealed, is entirely made up of secrets.

DefectorsCold War EraFather and SonEspionage
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Funeral in Berlin

Len Deighton · 312 pages

A ferociously cool Cold War thriller from the author of The Ipcress File.Len Deighton's third novel has become a classic, as compelling and suspenseful now as when it first exploded on to the bestseller lists.In Berlin, where neither side of the wall is safe, Colonel Stok of Red Army Security is prepared to sell an important Russian scientist to the West – for a price. British intelligence are wil

DefectorsCold War EraEspionageThriller
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DefectorsCold War EraEspionageThriller
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Topaz

Leon Uris · 352 pages

On the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis, American and French intelligence agents are plunged into a maze of Cold War intrigue In Paris, 1962, French intelligence chief André Devereaux and NATO intelligence chief Michael Nordstrom have uncovered Soviet plans to ship nuclear arms to Cuba. But when Devereaux reports his findings and nobody acts—and he is targeted in an assassination attempt—he soon re

DefectorsCold War EraEspionageThriller
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The Defection of A. J. Lewinter

Robert Littell · 304 pages

Unremarkable American scientist A.J. Lewinter triggers a series of high-stakes events when, during an academic conference in Tokyo, he contacts the KGB with an offer to defect, a proposal neither country can be sure is genuine.

DefectorsCold War EraEspionageThriller
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The Human Factor

Graham Greene · 326 pages

"In the low-key but treacherous domain of "the firm," Maurice Castle performs routine intelligence duties that are less than world-shattering. Then a new security chief, "a broom," is appointed. As he sweeps through the department, he uncovers a leak, a systematic betrayal involving the major powers in South Africa. Castle's associate, Davis, had access to the files in question and his drinking, g

DefectorsCold War EraEspionageThriller
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The Last Frontier

Alistair MacLean · 319 pages

Doctor Jennings, a scientist in possession of a precious secret, has gone over to the Soviet Union, and British secret agent Michael Reynolds must get him back. Penetrating the Iron Curtain is difficult, but to bring out a man who is elderly and well-known seems impossible in the face of the secret police--until Reynolds discovers there are Hungarian patriots ready to help.

DefectorsCold War EraEspionageThriller
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From Russia With Love

Ian Fleming · 258 pages

James Bond is marked for death by the Soviet counterintelligence agency SMERSH in Ian Fleming’s masterful spy thriller, and the novel that President John F. Kennedy named one of his favourite books of all time. SMERSH stands for ‘Death to Spies’ and there’s no secret agent they’d like to disgrace and destroy more than 007, James Bond. But ensnaring the British Secret Service’s most lethal opera

DefectorsCold War EraEspionageThriller
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The Cardinal of the Kremlin

Tom Clancy · 626 pages

Two men possess vital data on Russia's Star Wars missile defense system. One of them is CARDINAL—America's highest agent in the Kremlin—and he's about to be terminated by the KGB. The other is the one American who can save CARDINAL and lead the world to the brink of peace…or war. Here is author Tom Clancy's heart-stopping masterpiece. A riveting novel of the most important issue of our time.

DefectorsCold War EraEspionageThriller
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Gorky Park

Martin Cruz Smith · 384 pages

A triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI and New York police as he pursues a rich, ruthless, and well-connected American fu

DefectorsCold War EraEspionageThriller
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The Trinity Six

Charles Cumming · 460 pages

Europe is still littered with the darkest secrets of the Cold War. And the most deadly revelation of them all is about to be made! Hard-up Russia expert Dr Sam Gaddis finally has a lead for a book that could set his career back on track. He has staggering new information about an unknown sixth member of the infamous Cambridge spy ring -- a man who has evaded detection for his entire life. But when

DefectorsCold War EraEspionageThriller
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Ride A Pale Horse

Helen MacInnes · 362 pages

When Karen Cornell, a beautiful journalist on assignment in Czechoslovakia, agrees to help a would-be defector by carrying top-secret documents to Washington, she is pulled into an astonishing web of terrorism, political assassination, blackmail, espionage, and treason in the highest levels of both superpowers. One false move could cost Karen her life -- and throw the world into violent war

DefectorsCold War EraEspionageThriller
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Dancer, Daughter, Traitor, Spy

Elizabeth Kiem · 264 pages

After a harrowing defection to the United States in 1982, Russian teenager Marya and her father settle in Brooklyn, where Marya is drawn into a web of intrigue involving her gift of foresight, her mother's disappearance, and a boy she cannot bring herself to trust.

DefectorsCold War EraEspionageConspiracy
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The Berlin Conspiracy

Tom Gabbay · 320 pages

"Jack Teller is through with the CIA--until the Berlin station is contacted by a Colonel in the East German Stasi just days before President John F. Kennedy's scheduled visit to the Wall. The Stasi officer has an important message--and he will speak to no one but Jack"--Publisher description.

DefectorsCold War EraEspionageThriller
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Hidden Prey

John Sandford · 393 pages

Det. Lucas Davenport has battled some real demons over the past 15 Prey novels and drifted in and out of lust and love with a host of women. But now he's happily married to the lovely Weather; has a nine month old son, Sam; and takes care of his 12-year old ward, Letty West.

DefectorsCold War EraEspionageThriller
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The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Stieg Larsson · 602 pages

> Lisbeth Salander—the heart of Larsson’s two previous novels—lies in critical condition, a bullet wound to her head, in the intensive care unit of a Swedish city hospital. She’s fighting for her life in more ways than one: if and when she recovers, she’ll be taken back to Stockholm to stand trial for three murders. With the help of her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she will not only have t

DefectorsEspionageCold War EraThriller
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The Defector

Daniel Silva

In the #1 New York Times bestseller Moscow Rules, Gabriel Allon brought down the most dangerous man in the world. But he made one mistake. Leaving him alive…Over the course of a brilliant career, Daniel Silva has established himself as the “gold standard” of thriller writers (Dallas Morning News), a “master writer of espionage and intrigue” (The Cincinnati Enquirer), and the creator of “some of th

DefectorsEspionageThrillerConspiracy
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Trespass

Sandra Grey · 369 pages

May, 1946. When an agreement between German officer Hans Brenner and U.S. intelligence goes horribly wrong, Russian Lieutenant Viktor Rostov must deliver Hans or risk losing his daughter forever. Hans must help the Soviets build a bomb, and Russian-born American nurse Natalie Allred must swear allegiance to the motherland and to Rostov himself. Escape seems impossible within the iron grip of the s

DefectorsCold War EraEspionageThriller
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Palace of Treason

Jason Matthews · 470 pages

"From the bestselling, Edgar Award-winning author of the "terrifically good" (The New York Times) Red Sparrow, a compulsively readable new novel about star-crossed Russian agent Dominika Egorova and CIA's Nate Nash in a desperate race to the finish. Captain Dominika Egorova of the Russian Intelligence Service (SVR) has returned from the West to Moscow. She despises the men she serves, the oligarch

DefectorsEspionageThrillerMale Lead
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The Increment

David Ignatius · 392 pages

From a hidden enclave in the maze of Tehran, an Iranian scientist who calls himself Dr. Ali sends encrypted messages to the CIA, he then discovers he's being followed. To get his agent out, Pappas turns to a secret British spy team known as 'The Increment' whose operatives carry the modern version of the double-O 'license to kill.'

DefectorsEspionageThrillerConspiracy
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Dancer

Colum McCann · 352 pages

A Russian peasant who became an international legend, a Cold War exile who inspired millions, an artist whose name stood for genius, sex, and excess--the magnificence of Rudolf Nureyev's life and work are known, but in this novel McCann reinvents this erotically charged figure, willful, lustful, and driven by a never-to-be-met need for perfection, through the light he cast on those who knew him. S

DefectorsCold War EraMale LeadCharacter-Driven
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Destination Unknown

Agatha Christie · 216 pages

Hilary Craven has lost the will to live, Mrs Betterton is already dead. Then Hilary is asked to impersonate the dead woman and to trace her husband - a missing nuclear scientist - and her will to live returns. A faked air disaster, a string of radio-active pearls, a leper colony floundering in the dry heat of the Moroccan desert. Hilary is lead towards a terrifying discovery and her new found enth

DefectorsEspionageThrillerConspiracy
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The Osterman Weekend

Robert Ludlum

Cold War EraEspionageThrillerConspiracy
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The Orphan Master's Son

Adam Johnson · 456 pages

An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master’s Son follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea. Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans. There the boy is giv

DefectorsEspionageThrillerMale Lead

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