W. Galt's favorite political spy thrillers where shadow powers change the world

I read The Sum of All Fears many years ago, but what struck me most was the sense of helplessness ordinary citizens face when confronted with the catastrophes politics can create.

It is not simply about an individual act of evil, but about how the system itself can enable extreme violence that would be impossible without the terrifying power of states and the terrorist groups that grow around them.

That feeling of being at the mercy of politics, unable to do anything about it, is deeply disturbing. It reinforces the idea that no system, not even a well-established democracy, is truly in the hands of those who should own it—the citizens—but rather in the hands of elites with immense power.

I read The Day of the Jackal when I was very young, then I saw the original film, and later I read the book again.

It fascinates me because of the precision with which it is written and because of two ideas that have been essential to my own career as a writer: how a terrorist group, by commissioning the assassination of De Gaulle, could have changed history with a single bullet had the attempt succeeded, and how politics becomes intertwined with violence and terrorism, showing that they are ultimately inseparable and that one cannot exist without the other.

I read I Am Pilgrim much later than the other great espionage thrillers, and it rekindled my taste for this kind of novel, which had a major influence on the writing of my book.

Hayes manages to maintain the tension on every page, making it almost impossible to put the book down without knowing what will happen next.

More importantly, he achieves something essential: the struggle between two individuals and their respective power structures becomes a reflection of what it really is—the silent, cold war that ordinary citizens endure without even realizing it exists, a war fought behind our backs and without our knowledge, leaving us adrift among the real forces shaping the world, like a small boat caught in a storm.

This book is the most recent novel I have read by John le Carré, an author I am deeply drawn to because, usually far removed from fast-paced action, he reflects with remarkable depth on the hidden and opaque forces that truly govern our societies.

Our Game feels like a fitting culmination of his career, and I could not put it down. I read it very quickly, thanks to the precision of his writing and his ability to sustain uncertainty throughout.

The title itself could not be more appropriate: “our game” is the game played by shadow powers, by the hidden face of the state, acting beyond democratic control and with profound disregard for the interests of ordinary men and women.

This is one of those books I love because you literally cannot put it down until you have reached the final page, and when you do, you are left with a lingering sense of sadness that the book is over.

I love it as a reader, and I admire it as a writer, because it shows how to handle an intense plot with a firm hand, page after page, without losing momentum and without giving the reader a moment to breathe—something I have also tried to achieve in my own books.

In addition, the plausibility of the plot, the dark places where the characters move, the politicians, and those other figures who are always kept hidden from us and who carry out the crimes of power, create an almost disturbingly realistic picture that we should not ignore, because it reveals the true face of power.