For the record, I’m not a spy. I’m a Lithuanian-American writer who had a dickens of a time validating WWII-era family papers about the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. I don’t speak Lithuanian, so I relied on English-language sources where Lithuania was sometimes little more than a footnote. As I learned more about the Soviet occupation and life after independence, I became convinced that it’s almost impossible to talk about Lithuania without considering the geopolitical tension that comes with having Russia as a neighbor. This grew into a love of spycraft, political strategy, history, international tensions, Lithuania, Eastern Europe, Russia… and pierogis.
This book is set in Lebanon during the 1970s when tradition, an etiquette of secrets, and shifting alliances were the norm.
The story is compelling because it captures the Middle East before it was transformed by decades of conflict and political turmoil. CIA officer Tom Rodgers is a better Bond, relying on wit and intelligence instead of gadgetry. He’s a spy’s spy in a novel rich with intrigue, tradecraft, and human insight.
Agents of Innocence is the book that established David Ignatius's reputation as a master of the novel of contemporary espionage. Into the treacherous world of shifting alliances and arcane subterfuge comes idealistic CIA man Tom Rogers. Posted in Beirut to penetrate the PLO and recruit a high-level operative, he soon learns the heavy price of innocence in a time and place that has no use for it.
What do you get when you combine a disgruntled employee, alligators, organizational politics, and espionage? A compelling look into the culture of the CIA.
Strong characters lead this hunt for a mole within the CIA. Two of the most interesting are women who are radically different from each other. One is rooted organizational politics. The other is determined to save the organization by finding a mole and righting a wrong.
It’s both entertaining and insightful. McCloskey takes a strategic and intellectual approach to the story, which is, for me, refreshing.
A Russian arrives in Singapore with a secret to sell. When the Russian is killed and Sam Joseph, the CIA officer dispatched for the meet, goes missing, operational chief Artemis Procter is made a scapegoat for the disaster and run out of the service. Months later, Sam appears at Procter's doorstep with an explosive secret: there is a Russian mole burrowed deep within the highest ranks of the CIA.
As Procter and Sam investigate, they arrive at a shortlist of suspects made up of both Procter's closest friends and fiercest enemies. The hunt requires Procter to dredge up her checkered…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Geeks are my kind of people. Add exotic locations, a sexy Chinese operative, and industrial espionage for the simmering foundation of The Expat.
Michael Wang is an ambitious engineer enticed to Beijing by the promise of success. Once there, he gradually learns he’s being manipulated, and that’s just the start of it. He becomes a pawn in a swirling game of espionage-chess.
The surprise ending made it one of my favorite and most memorable spy reads.
A fresh and vivid new voice brings a contemporary edge to the classic espionage novel.
At twenty-six, Princeton grad Michael Wang is trapped. Stifled under the bamboo ceiling at General Motors, he’s working quietly on a breakthrough in self-driving car technology that he hopes will catapult him out of obscurity. Disaffected and largely friendless in San Francisco, he’s dogged by resentment towards the Ivy Leaguers who never accepted him and his colleagues at GM who see him as passive and faceless.
Meet Milow Weaver. Anything by Steinhauer appeals to me, but Milow is one of my favorite spies.
He’s a person with flaws who is trying to escape the dark world of espionage for the sake of his family and his future. His nemesis, a Chinese agent, remains a mysterious, although fearsome, force.
The use of spy craft is exquisite and the novel is clever. I think you’ll like it.
Superb new CIA thriller featuring black ops expert Milo Weaver and acclaimed by Lee Child as 'first class - the kind of thing John le Carre might have written'.
In today's CIA, there are hotspots everywhere. And wherever there's trouble, there's a Tourist: the men and women who do the CIA's dirty work. They're the Company's best - and until he burnt out, Milo Weaver was the best of them all.
Milo has spent the last four years behind a desk, tracking the elusive killer known as 'The Tiger'. When the Tiger unexpectedly gives himself up, it's because he wants…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’ve always been interested in the impact of technology on espionage - not from a gadgetry perspective, but from a security and informational context.
In The Director, a young punk exposes a flaw in a CIA computer network and offers a list of agents to prove it. This leads to an intense search for a mole within the agency. Disinformation is a compelling plot driver and feels relevant to today’s world of AI-driven manipulation.
Graham Weber has been the director of the CIA for less than a week when a Swiss kid in a dirty T-shirt walks into the American consulate in Hamburg and says the agency has been hacked, and he has a list of agents' names to prove it. This is the moment a CIA director most dreads. Like the new world of cyber-espionage from which it's drawn, The Director is a maze of double dealing, about a world where everything is written in zeroes and ones-and nothing can be trusted.
