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🧲 Books like this

The Honourable Schoolboy

John le Carre · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Clear and Present Danger

Tom Clancy · 760 pages

The sudden and surprising assassination of three American officials in Colombia. Many people in many places, moving off on missions they all mistakenly thought they understood. The future was too fearful for contemplation, and beyond the expected finish lines were things that, once decided, were better left unseen.

Cold War EraEspionageDense ProseSlow-Paced
❤️

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

Cold War EraSlow-PacedEspionageAtmospheric
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Declare

Tim Powers · 528 pages

As a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Andrew Hale finds himself caught up in a secret, even more ruthless war. Two decades later, in 1963, he will be forced to confront again the nightmarethat has haunted his adult life: a lethal unfinished operation code-named Declare. From the corridors of Whitehall to the Arabian desert, from post-war Berlin to the

Cold War EraEspionageDense ProseAtmospheric
❤️

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

EspionageDense ProseCold War EraSlow-Paced
❤️

The Tears of Autumn

Charles McCarry · 276 pages

Influential secret agent Paul Christopher pursues a dangerous theory about the assassination of President Kennedy, an investigation that threatens American foreign policy.

Cold War EraEspionagePolitical IntrigueDense Prose
❤️

Istanbul Passage

Joseph Kanon

"From the acclaimed, bestselling author of Stardust, The Good German, and Los Alamos--a gripping tale of an American undercover agent in 1945 Istanbul who descends into the murky cat-and-mouse world of compromise and betrayal that will come to define the entire post-war era. A neutral capital straddling Europe and Asia, Istanbul has spent the war as a magnet for refugees and spies. Even American b

Cold War EraEspionagePolitical IntrigueAtmospheric
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The Dogs of Riga

Henning Mankell · 336 pages

In 1991, two corpses, frozen together, have been washed ashore on the remote Swedish coastline. Inspector Wallander travels to the politically unsettled Latvia to attempt to solve the mystery.

Cold War EraSlow-PacedEspionageAtmospheric
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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

Cold War EraEspionageSlow-PacedThriller
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The Bourne Supremacy

Robert Ludlum · 679 pages

EspionageCold War EraPolitical IntrigueDense Prose
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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

Cold War EraEspionagePolitical IntrigueThriller
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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

Cold War EraEspionagePolitical IntrigueThriller
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The Day of the Jackal

Frederick Forsyth · 408 pages

In a class by itself. Unputdownable' Sunday TimesOne of the most celebrated thrillers ever written, The Day of the Jackal is the electrifying story of an anonymous Englishman who in, the spring of 1963, was hired by Colonel Marc Rodin, Operations Chief of the O. A. S., to assassinate General de Gaulle. The Jackal. A tall, blond Englishman with opaque, gray eyes. A killer at the top of his pro

EspionageDense ProseCold War EraPolitical Intrigue
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The Company

Robert Littell · 894 pages

From the back cover: Welcome to the Company - better known as the CIA to outsiders. With a sharp eye for the pathos and absurdity of the spy game, internationally renowned novelist Robert Littell seamlessly weaves together history and fiction to create a multigenerational, wickedly nostalgic saga that races across a landscape spanning the legendary Berlin Base of the 1950s, the Soviet invasion

Cold War EraEspionagePolitical IntrigueThriller
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London Match

Len Deighton · 387 pages

Ce roman fait suite à ##Le réseau Brahms## et à ##Mexico poker## en formant une trilogie. La force de cette sombre histoire d'espionnage réside surtout dans la tentation d'approfondir les états d'âme des principaux protagonistes. Sans reprendre la trilogie de Smiley de John Le Carré, certaines ressemblances dans l'intrigue n'empêcheront pas les amateurs de cette formule de lire avec plaisir ces tr

Cold War EraEspionagePolitical IntrigueThriller
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36 Yalta Boulevard

Olen Steinhauer · 320 pages

Cold War EraEspionagePolitical IntrigueThriller
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Underworld

Don DeLillo · 827 pages

Nick Shay and Kiara Sax knew each other once, intimately and they meet again in the Sahara desert. He is trying to outdistance the crucial events of his early life, she is an artist who has made a blood struggle for independence. Underworld is a story of men and women together and apart, seen in deep clear detail and in stadium sized panoramas, shadowed throughout by the overarching conflict of Th

Cold War EraSlow-PacedDense ProseMultiple POV
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In the First Circle

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 741 pages

Cold War EraSlow-PacedDense ProseMultiple POV
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Milan Kundera · 314 pages

A young woman obsessed with a man torn between his love for her and his womanizing; one of his mistresses and her faithful lover--these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel.

Cold War EraSlow-PacedDense ProseMultiple POV
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Shadow of Night

Deborah Harkness · 592 pages

Picking up from A Discovery of Witches’ cliffhanger ending, Shadow of Night takes Diana and Matthew on a trip through time to Elizabethan London, where they are plunged into a world of spies, magic, and a coterie of Matthew’s old friends, the School of Night. As the search for Ashmole 782 deepens and Diana seeks out a witch to tutor her in magic, the net of Matthew’s past tightens around them, and

Slow-PacedDense ProseEspionagePolitical Intrigue
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The Man in the High Castle

Philip K. Dick · 249 pages

The Man in the High Castle is an alternate history novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. Published and set in 1962, the novel takes place fifteen years after an alternative ending to World War II, and concerns intrigues between the victorious Axis Powers—primarily, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany—as they rule over the former United States, as well as daily life under the resulting totalitarian

Cold War EraPolitical IntrigueSlow-PacedEspionage
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The Untouchable

John Banville · 410 pages

(From the Hardcover edition) Twenty years after his "retirement," ex-spy Victor Maskell attempts to come to terms with what has happened to his life by embarking on his memoirs. This is the plot which fuels Banville's stunning new novel--a story that goes beyond the mere facts of espionage to penetrate the intricate heart of the spy.

Cold War EraEspionageDense ProsePolitical Intrigue
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The Dragonbone Chair

Tad Williams · 672 pages

In the peaceful land of Osten Ard, the good king is dying-and a long-dreaded evil is about to be unleashed. Only Simon, a lowly castle scullion apprenticed to a secret order dedicated to halting the coming darkness, can solve the dangerous riddle that offers salvation to the land.

Slow-PacedDense ProseAtmosphericPolitical Intrigue
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The Moscow Club

Joseph Finder · 539 pages

Cold War EraEspionagePolitical IntrigueThriller
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Cold War EraEspionagePolitical IntrigueThriller

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