Books like A Spy's Guide to Santa Fe and Albuquerque

As a former intelligence officer, I love books that tell me about the places where real spies (and even some fictional ones) operated.

Roy Berkeley has done just that in cracking form with A Spy's London, which is an exhaustive guide to where the spies were in London (and still are).

Although I would challenge his assertion that London is the espionage capital of the world (hint: it’s Berlin), his book tells you the story and then shows you how to get there with walking tours, maps, and photos.

I especially love his description of the “ops” and how he brings them to life, whether they went well or failed spectacularly!

Okay, it’s time for some fun. Matthew Field & Ajay Chowdhury have given us a feast with their book: Darker than the Sun.

More than anything, I can say I love this book because the authors know 007 and the business of spy movies better than anyone! If you love spy fiction like I do, you need this book because it takes you to wherever James Bond, aka 007, has been.

What I really love is that you don’t need to travel to these places, because this book gives you all the information on the story, how the movies were filmed, the people, and, of course, stunning photography.

From the Swiss Alps, to Jamaica, to Istanbul, to Thailand, you can plan your own trip, or – like I did – just settle down in a comfortable chair with a Vesper martini and enjoy!

I love this book because it details the story of America’s first spy ring, the Culper Spy Ring, set up by George Washington in 1778.

Author Bill Bleyer “turns” much of the TV misinformation around and corrects the record while giving us a succinct history and guide to the still-existing Revolutionary War sites on Manhattan and Long Island. 

He sets the stage with Washington’s retreat from Long Island and then fills the book with historical notes, maps, and diagrams, including a very good history of the doomed spy Nathan Hale and what Washington did to avenge his execution.

The author provides much detail on the what, where, when, and how of Washington’s spies and how the visitor can find what remains today. 

I love all aspects of the Spy Game, from the places, to books, to film, to the food, and (of course) the drinks, so where best to go to find that kind of info than in a great book like A Spy Walked Into A Bar…? 

I love the premise, the stories, and the how to make a drink. Put it all together, and you have not only a mixology but a captivating history of an “interesting” side of espionage.

Written by two senior CIA officers who know the business and what it takes to survive, which includes a cocktail once in a while. With this book, you can go into a bar and spot the spies or their targets… maybe.

Spy Tradecraft coupled with Spy Barcraft at its best. I’ll have a Talisker 18, double, straight up, in a cold glass, please!

A story about evil puppets? Sign me up! Oddity is a town only the Addams Family could love, with weird, strange, unusual, and downright wrong things taking place at all hours of the day and night. What I love about this book is the way it manages to give us an entire town of spookiness, and yet still find a plot that is even more spooky. The characters are unforgettable, and the villains are a joyous wonder.

Having read the series out of order, The Cartel was my first Winslow book. His story was so captivating that I needed to go back and read how it all started.

The fact that I could start with The Cartel without having read the origin story is an example of Winslow’s talent. The Cartel is a great stand-alone story, made even better when its two companion books are added together. Winslow has developed compelling characters, and it's enjoyable to watch how they evolve and face new challenges.

Carolina walks a fine line between reality and magic, a state of mind many a struggling child understands.

Stuck with her grandfather, whose mind is failing, she finds a special connection to the fantastical stories he tells of a lake and bees and a tree, all connected with love of family and one’s roots. She forms a special bond with her “crazy” grandfather.

His stories about the tree with the magical power to bring people back together especially rings true. Who doesn’t believe in the magic of trees, especially old trees with deep roots (I still do). When Carolina rescues her grandfather from the old folks home and convinces her parents not to sell the family ranch, everything comes together.

Reality and magic really do belong together.

The Sea of Grass is a short novel, standard in length for the time in which it was published (1936), close in time to other short classics such as The Grapes of Wrath and The Postman Always Rings Twice. It is written in first person, and in some respects, it suggests the influence of The Great Gatsby, another short masterpiece some ten years earlier, with an observer narrator, an elegiac tone, an evocative prose style, and interesting figurative language. This novel, like many, draws upon the range war (nesters versus the cattle empire) for its premise, but it becomes a very interesting exploration of human nature and the inevitable passing of time. 

By now, McCarthy is well known for his books on the Southwest. Cities of the Plain is painfully overlooked.

I read it in college as a precocious creative writing major and fell in love because the towns mentioned (Belén, where my grandmother was born, as example) were familiar to me and yet I had no idea these nowhere places of my youth were known to anybody else in the world, to say nothing about their value to any artistic form.

Unlike All the Pretty Horses, Cities of the Plain has zero romanticism to it: it’s a contemporary, hard-driven tale of ranching in the badlands of New Mexico. McCarthy focuses on the pumpjacks and the stench of creosote that encapsulate the southern part of the state.

There’s also a gruesomely funny passage about an Oldsmobile and dozens of jackrabbits. 

First of all, this sprawling novel is funny and entertaining, and those qualities would be reason enough that I would recommend it. Yet beyond those qualities, it created a strong sense of place and a real social and political conflict without ever becoming preachy or heavy handed—not an easy feat as I have learned.

The storyline, a conflict over land use and water rights, is repeated again and again throughout the West and Southwest in particular—in this case pitting real estate developers against impoverished locals. But the story is also about a conflict of cultures and how those cultures perceive and connect to the land. Exposing such conflicts is a boon of literature.