100 Books Like The London Spy

I first visited St Paul’s Cathedral as a schoolboy, climbing nervously through the stone corridors, then the precipitous metal gangways and staircases up, up, up to the whispering gallery and the summit of the outer dome beyond. It was a thrilling experience I have never forgotten. Little did I realise then that my dream of becoming a published novelist would come true and, beyond all my wildest dreams, I would bring St Paul’s to life in my own stories.

This book gripped me from the start, revealing the extraordinary engineering required to build the cathedral while the old structure was dismantled. I didn’t realise how many clever tricks were used to make the building look as grand as it does today. The false domes, the use of chains in the stonework, the false facades, and so much corner cutting bring the project to completion within a stringent and often begrudging… show more.

I needed to take my research from the Old Bailey archives and bring it to life, but the detail was disparate and piecemeal. I found myself struggling to get a clear window into Mother Clap’s molly house and other molly haunts.

Rictor Norton’s book was exactly what I needed. Thoroughly researched and clearly laid out, it offers the reader a chance to delve into London’s molly culture, exploring molly haunts and gaining a sense of their language and social mores.

I still had a lot of work to do, bringing the mollies to life as fully-rounded fictional characters. Norton’s book is a stickler for fact and eschews romantic supposition, but without a doubt, his book gives the Georgian London time traveler a vital key not just to the lives of the mollies but to the everyday lives of all working Londoners in all their grimy glory.

I think if we went back in time to 1700s London, we would see very little of the wealthy, privileged world so often depicted on stage and screen, and find ourselves far more excited by the filth and clatter of real London–the London of street sellers, stray dogs, pillorying, bawdy houses, and taverns. I know I would.

Without a doubt, all echelons of society took an interest in bawdy houses back then, particularly those in and around Covent Garden, where sex workers milled around the hummums and various shops, pamphleteers, and stalls, selling their wares.

In Hallie Rubenhold’s brilliant book, we get a glimpse into a surprising world, where (mainly) women found misery but also–in some cases–agency and wealth by selling themselves to well-to-do ‘gents’. This book is thrilling and heartbreaking in equal measure, and it proved to be an essential companion as I wandered through the backstreets of old… show more.

I hate reading historical fiction when it seems perfectly obvious that the author has no idea where they are. They don’t know the place names, they don’t know the roads, and they haven’t the foggiest sense of how people actually got from one part of the city to another. It is surprisingly common for novels set in London to take the reader on absurdly circuitous routes, simply because the author hasn’t bothered to look at a map.

This is particularly irksome and unforgivable in London’s case because so many of the streets and alleyways are still in existence. For my part, writing Thomas True was an excuse to wander around London with my John Rocque map tucked under my arm, timing various routes and working out precisely how Gabriel and Thomas would have journeyed through the bewilderingly busy city to Mother Clap’s Alsatia Old London Bridge, the Exchange, and Whitechapel.… show more.

I’m a fan of history. A storyline that revolves around such a long-term contract intrigued me. This one is set back in the 1960s, with scenes that jump back to World War II and then the fifties.

Griffin’s style was smooth. She brought me along in the story, giving me little hints as to what was really going on. There are secrets galore here and plenty of surprises. The characters are well-drawn. The timeframe of the story works perfectly with some of the twists.

This novel represents a sharp turn for me. Until I snapped up Zero History in an airport bookstore many years ago, the science fiction I’d read seemed like dry, intellectual exercises. The characters didn’t have depth. They never made me laugh (or cry). But Zero History unleashed a passion in me for speculative fiction, and eventually, it turned my own writing in that direction as well. To this day, it’s one of my all-time favorite novels. While it’s the third book in a William Gibson trilogy, it is entirely complete on its own. There’s a pop culture, cool vibe about it as the story taps into the lives of three people with unusual gifts – which a global marketing magnate dearly wants to use in various ways.

As cliché as it sounds, I truly did laugh and cry my way through this excellent book of essays by actress and comedian Casey Wilson. Wilson is an excellent storyteller and someone who is just profoundly, naturally funny. But she does not shy away from some heartbreaking and emotionally raw material too, which, quite frankly, is my jam. I did that thing where you get both the book and the audiobook, so when you are walking the dog you can still be reading. I highly recommend following suit because Wilson is such a  delight to listen to. I may have had to pull my car over while listening one day because it was not safe to drive whilst weeping uncontrollably.  

Ok, you’ve read Cohen and Monsters and the Monstrous. This monster stuff is getting pretty good, and you might be able to feel around the edges a bit. How does it apply to contemporary America which “no longer believes in monsters?” This is where Poole’s book comes in. Poole walks through monstrosity in the US from Columbus’ first steps to just shy of 2020. All the juicy topics that Americans have used monsters for—sex, race, and politics—emerge in this monstrous tour de force of US history. This is one of the first books I recommend to my students.

This book tells the tech-business story of algorithms and data exhaust and the companies who have implemented the dystopian future prophesized by Boorstin, Toffler, Postman, and others. While the book is large, Zuboff’s writing draws you into a world you know and, paradoxically, don’t know.

The work is the final stop of our story about information and knowledge, its chaotic meandering through amusing images and the shock of the future. 

King’s unapologetically devoted to unrefined pop culture, and I’m right there with her. I completely relate to the magnetic pull of lowbrow reality shows like Jersey Shore. I sit down to an episode of Real Housewives and get up five hours later with a full bladder, cheese-dusted fingers, and no idea how so much time has passed.

I’m sometimes embarrassed to admit my love of what others may not find sophisticated, but King’s essays make me proud to be in such great company, and I feel nothing less than joy about it.