Books Read in February 2026

 

This was another good reading month. Mostly mysteries this month, but that is OK. I read a very long, very heavy graphic memoir, but it was worth it. I read a book from my Classics list, in eBook format. And a mystery by a Canadian, set in Saskatchewan.

So, here are the books I read:

Graphic Memoir

You Can Never Die (2025) by Harry Bliss

This is a graphic memoir by Harry Bliss. My husband and I and both read this one. It is 400 pages and very heavy. But even with all the text, it is a relatively fast read. Initially I thought this book was mostly about his dog, Penny, that he had for 17 years. And there is a lot here about the grief that Harry Bliss experienced after Penny died. But there is a lot more about his life than that. His parents and siblings, what his childhood was like. The  writing is good, and I love Bliss's art. But in some cases I think he shared too much. He had a very difficult childhood; his parents were abusive and fought a lot; and he had drug abuse problems. Still I am very glad I read it and it is a book I will enjoy reading again.

Fiction, Classic

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) by Muriel Spark

I did not enjoy reading this book at all. In retrospect, I can appreciate the good points of the book; it had a unique structure with shifts in time both backwards and forward, which at times was confusing. I can understand why most people have a higher opinion of the book than I did. Read my review here.

Crime Fiction

Going to Beautiful (2022) by Anthony Bidulka

This book was the 2023 winner of the Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best Crime Novel. It is a mystery, but the overarching story is about a man working through his grief after his husband of thirty years dies, and I found it very compelling. The mystery plot sort of sneaks up on you. The story starts out in Toronto, but it is set mostly in Saskatchewan. See my review here.

Violent Ward (1993) by Len Deighton

Len Deighton is best known for his spy fiction, but this book is not in that genre at all, it is comedic crime fiction, and very well written. The setting is Los Angeles, around the time of the Rodney King trial; the main character, Mickey Murphy, is a very shady lawyer in financial trouble. He has gotten himself involved financially with an old acquaintance primarily because he used to be madly in love with the man's wife. A man is killed and the police suspect that Mickey killed him. I enjoyed this book; it was a lot of fun. 

Flair for Murder (2024) by Frances Lockridge and Richard Lockridge

Frances and Richard Lockridge wrote three mystery series together starting in 1936 and ending in 1963: The Mr. and Mrs. North series, the Capt. Heimrich series,  and the Nathan Shapiro series.  Richard continued writing two of those series after Frances's death. This short story book consists of 13 short stories, one about Mr. and Mrs. North, and the others all about Capt. Heimrich. In this post I reviewed the first three stories in the book. In a more recent post, I talked more generally about the other stories in the book. Most of the stories were under 10 pages long.

Death at Greenway (2021) by Lori Rader-Day

I read this book because I wanted a book that had Agatha Christie as a character, but not acting as a sleuth; this fit the bill perfectly. And also because Glen had given me his copy of the book a few years ago. Greenway was Agatha Christie's home in Devon and this mystery is about a group of evacuees living a Greenway during the war. This is a fictionalized version but there really were ten young evacuees, some of them infants, moved to Greenway during the war along with two nurses. There are lots of details about living in a country house in Devon, and how the war affected the people who lived in the area. The mystery revolves around a stranger in the area who is murdered shortly after the evacuees arrive. This book was very well written, possible a bit long at 450 pages, and I enjoyed it very much.

Murder of a Lady (1931) by Anthony Wynne

This book is a vintage mystery and a locked-room mystery. So if you like mysteries about impossible crimes, this could be for you. I felt that this story spent too much time on the locked-room aspect, and not enough on the characters, but still I mostly enjoyed the book. And the setting in Scotland in the early 1930s was interesting. See my review here.

Shanghai (2024) by Joseph Kanon

This book is set in pre-World War II Shanghai in 1938, at the time many European Jews were emigrating to Shanghai because it was the only place that would take them. In December 2025, I reread Shanghai Moon by S.J. Rozan, which was partially set in Shanghai at the same time, and I was motivated to read more about that time and place. Kanon's book is set almost entirely in Shanghai prior to World War II. This is only the second book I have read by Kanon, and I will be reading more by him.

The photos at the top and bottom of this post were taken recently when we went for a walk at Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden. The garden has several lovely Hong Kong Orchid trees and Glen took photos of the pink flowers on those trees. The decorated stones were in a creek there. After our walk, we went to a favorite café nearby. The photo below was my son's breakfast (French toast), which he always orders there. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.

Spell the Month in Books — August 2025

 

Spell the Month in Books is a monthly meme hosted by Jana at Reviews from the Stacks. The link up post is posted on the first Saturday of each month. Each month one or two themes are suggested for the books that are chosen. The theme for August is “favorite authors.”

Once again, I am getting this post in very late in the month. 

A is for And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

This is one of Agatha Christie's most well-known mysteries. I have read at least 50 of Christie's mystery novels, but I did not read this one until 2020. I knew the general setup but had not watched any film adaptations, and was wondering how it all ends. Could it live up to the acclaim it has always gotten? It did for me. The writing is very suspenseful. I could not help trying to figure out not only who was the killer but how it was all managed. I did at one time suspect the actual culprit but Christie is very competent at making you second guess your deductions.

U is for Unruly Son by Robert Barnard

This book was published in the UK as Death of a Mystery Writer. The main character is an obnoxious and overbearing mystery author who has made many enemies and insulted just about everyone he encounters. His wife and daughter love him, or at least tolerate him, but his two sons don't have much good to say about him. Of course, all of his children would like to inherit his money. So when he dies by poisoning they are the first persons the police consider as suspects. This was a very good read, which I expected because Robert Barnard is one of my favorite authors. He rarely disappoints me. 

G is for Gambit by Rex Stout

Rex Stout is my favorite author of all. He wrote 33 novels and 41 novellas about the private detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant, Archie Goodwin. The books are narrated by Archie. The series began in 1934 and the last book in the series, A Family Affair, was published in 1975, shortly before Stout's death. The Nero Wolfe series is fun to read because Wolfe has so many quirks. He hates to leave his home, thus he needs Archie Goodwin to do the legwork for him. He raises orchids and spends four hours each day in the plant rooms.  Eating and good food are very important to him and he never discusses business when eating. And those are just a few of his quirks. However, Gambit has one of the most straightforward plots of the 33 novels that Rex Stout wrote. Less of the quirks are evident or emphasized. The plotting is intricate and the mystery is especially challenging.

U is for The Unfortunate Englishman by John Lawton

I have been a fan of John Lawton's writing for years. His Inspector Frederick Troy series consists of eight novels published between 1995 and 2017. Those novels are a mix of police procedural and espionage, and are set between 1934 and 1963, with many of them covering multiple timelines. The Unfortunate Englishman is the second novel in the Joe Wilderness series. That series (so far) has focused on English / Russian / German relations in Berlin following World War II. The books in this series are really good spy fiction, but also complex and confusing. I love the focus on Berlin and the wall. This second novel in the series doesn't make as much sense if you have not read the first book.

S is for SS-GB by Len Deighton

SS-GB is an alternate history in which England has been invaded by Germany. The protagonist in this story is Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer of Scotland Yard, working under Gruppenführer Fritz Kellerman of the SS. The story is very complex. Len Deighton is one of my favorite authors, and I especially enjoy his spy fiction novels. I love his writing. This book, which is both a whodunit and a spy story, is no exception.

T is for A Tale about a Tiger and Other Mysterious Events by S.J. Rozan

S.J. Rozan is the author of the Lydia Chin / Bill Smith mystery series, one of my favorite contemporary mystery series. Lydia Chin is an American-born Chinese private investigator in her late twenties who lives in New York’s Chinatown with her mother. Bill Smith is a private investigator in his forties who lives in Manhattan. They are not partners but they often work together on cases. The element that I have always liked about this series is that the narrator of the books alternates. The first book was narrated by Lydia; the second book was narrated by Bill; and so on.

In A Tale about a Tiger and Other Mysterious Events, published by Crippen & Landru in 2009, there are nine stories by Rozan; six of the stories feature either Lydia Chin or Bill Smith or both. 

Six Degrees of Separation: From All Fours to The Spellman Files

 

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is All Fours by Miranda July. Although the book has been very successful, I know very little about it, so I am linking to my first book using the author's first name.

1st degree:

Linking from the author's name, Miranda July, my first book in the chain is City of Secrets (2011) by Kelli Stanley; the main character in this book is Miranda Corbie. I think Miranda is a lovely name. I haven't read this book but my husband has, and here is his brief review from Goodreads:

This excellent private eye thriller - the second of the Miranda Corbie series - weaves a genuinely sinister plot line into an evocative 1940 San Francisco setting. A strong protagonist (who drinks and smokes lots!), well drawn supporting characters, and style to burn.

2nd degree:

Using Kelli Stanley's last name, I link to a book from the Stanley Hastings series, Favor (1988) by Parnell Hall. My husband and I both read this book, but his review (at Goodreads) is much better than mine:

Stanley Hastings is a lowly-paid leg man for an ambulance chasing lawyer, a wannabe sort of private eye and writer, a self-deprecating and loving family man. In this, the third of Parnell Hall's series, we find Stanley off to Atlantic City to do a quick favor for someone who's not really even a friend. Before too long, he finds himself charged with grand larceny (the way he tries to get out of that is elegant) and in the frame for two murders. The characters are all sharply drawn, the pace is swift, the plot is complex in a good way, and there is a light tone throughout. There are nearly 20 in the series and I can't wait to get to the next one.

3rd degree:

Parnell Hall was a prolific author with multiple series. For my next link I choose a book by another author with the last name of Hall. Adam Hall was a pseudonym used by Ellestor Trevor, and under that name he wrote a long-running series of spy novels featuring Quiller, a British secret agent for a covert organization of spies, unacknowledged by the government. Quiller is a very unusual spy fiction protagonist in that he doesn't smoke, drink, or carry a gun. The Quiller Memorandum (1965) is set in the 1960s in Berlin, and Quiller has finished a long string of assignments to find Nazi war criminals and bring them to trial. He is planning to return to England the next day, but is enticed into a new assignment when another agent is killed.

4th degree:

Moving from a spy series written in the 1960s to another series written at about the same time, my next link is to Funeral in Berlin (1964) by one of my favorite authors, Len Deighton. In this story, the nameless spy (called Harry Palmer in the movie adaptations) is sent to East Berlin to facilitate the defection of an East German scientist. He must work with the Russian security-chief Colonel Stok and Hallam of the British Home Office. An elaborate plan is set up to get the scientist out of East Berlin. This book was published only three years after the Berlin Wall was constructed; in the introduction, Deighton speaks of the time he spent in East Berlin shortly after the wall went up. The setting feels very authentic.

5th degree:

Funeral in Berlin is about a defector in East Berlin. My next book, Defectors (2017) by Joseph Kanon, is about a group of American and British spies living in and around Moscow during the Cold War, after defecting to the USSR. The focus is on the relationship of the two brothers in the story, Frank, the US spy who defected to Russia in 1949, and Simon, his younger brother, who had to leave his job in intelligence to work in publishing after Frank's defection. In 1961, Simon has been allowed to come to Moscow to work with Frank on publishing his memoirs. I loved the exploration of family relationships, but the story has plenty of action also.

6th degree:

My next book, The Spellman Files (2007) by Lisa Lutz, is also about family relationships. The Spellmans are a strange and dysfunctional family who run a detective agency. Before reading the book, I had the mistaken notion that this book was primarily a humorous and cozy mystery. It is humorous but not so cozy, and sometimes does not even seem like crime fiction. I loved the writing, and I found the book hard to put down.

My Six Degrees starts in the US, moves to Berlin, Germany, then Russia, and back to the US. If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you? 

Have you read any of these books? 

The next Six Degrees will be on July 5, 2025 and the starting book will be the 2025 Stella Prize winner, Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser.

Books Read in July 2023

I had a good reading month in July. No complaints at all. I noticed that I read no vintage mysteries at all, this month or in June. I guess that is because I chose only one of those for my 20 Books of Summer list, and mostly I have been sticking to that list.

And now to the seven books I read:

Nonfiction

The Book of Forgotten Authors (2017) by Christopher Fowler

This is a reread. I read this book first in October 2020, and read it again this year for the Bookish Books Reading Challenge, hosted by Susan  at Bloggin' About Books. Christopher Fowler was interested in finding out about forgotten authors, and wrote a column on that subject in a British newspaper for many years before this book was published. Fowler's essays are entertaining and opinionated, and this is a book well worth reading. 

Jane Austen Cover to Cover: 200 Years of Classic Book Covers (2014) by Margaret C. Sullivan

This book compiles two hundred years of book covers for Austin's six novels and her other writings. It cannot cover every edition ever published but with over 200 images it is very impressive. The book also includes historical commentary and Austen trivia. I also read this book for the Bookish Books Reading Challenge.

Historical Fiction

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2009) by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

This epistolary novel set in London and on Guernsey in 1946 depicts the German occupation of Guernsey during World War II from the eyes of the residents. This was another book I read for the Bookish Books Reading Challenge. My review is here.

Science Fiction / Alternate History

SS-GB (1979) by Len Deighton

SS-GB is an alternate history in which England has been invaded by Germany. Len Deighton is one of my favorite authors and I was not disappointed in this book. My review is here.

Crime Fiction

The Nature of the Beast (2016) by Louise Penny

This book is the 11th in the Armand Gamache series by Louise Penny, and is set in Three Pines, Quebec in Canada. I like these books no matter where they are set, but when they are in Three Pines, it means that some of my favorite characters will feature: Ruth, Clara, Olivier and Gabriel, and Myrna at the bookstore. My review is here.

Disco for the Departed (2007) Colin Cotterill

This is the 3rd book in the Dr. Siri Paiboun series. This series is especially interesting because of the setting: Laos, in 1977, when the Communists are in power. My review is here.

Murder Most Fowl (1994) by Bill Crider 

This is the seventh book in Bill Crider's longest running series, the Sheriff Dan Rhodes series. This one provides a picture of rural Texas in the 1990's. The series has 25 books total and the last book was published in 2019. My review is here.

Garden Plants in August 

The photos at the top of this post are of Tibouchina heteromalla (Silver leafed Princess Flower) plants in our front flower beds. We just started seeing purple blooms on the plants in the last week. The foliage is also lovely, all year round. 

The top photo immediately above is the red lantana that is planted beside the Princess Flower. Those plant started blooming in late July which seems awfully late to me. 

Directly above is a volunteer strawberry plant that somehow grew in a pot of our succulents out front.

Photos taken and processed by my husband. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.

Six Degrees of Separation: from Romantic Comedy to The Beast Must Die

  

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is Curtis Sittenfeld's Romantic Comedy. I have not read that book or any of the books by that author, although I am curious about her writing.

For my first link, I will start with a romance novel ...

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is a romance, but definitely not a comedy. I like romance in a book, but usually not if that is the only focus. This one is also a mystery and a classic.

I like it when a book features a romance but the romance is secondary to the main plot, as in...

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman, the second book in the Thursday Murder Club series. In this book the mystery plot is primary but a secondary plot is DCI Chris Hudson's developing relationship with his PC's mother, Patrice. 

Elizabeth, one of the four main characters in The Man Who Died Twice, was formerly an MI5 agent, and in this book she is helping her ex-husband Douglas, who is still working for MI5. This leads me to my next link, also featuring an MI5 agent...

The Last Defector by Tony Cape features Derek Smailes, an MI5 agent sent to London to work at the UN. The plan is for him to aid in a plot to convince a Soviet (also working at the UN) to defect and provide information on disarmament plans in Russia. 

This leads to another book I read featuring a defector...

Catch a Falling Spy (apa Twinkle, Twinkle Little Spy) is one of seven novels featuring an unnamed British spy. The agent is tasked with evaluating a Russian defector, Professor Bekuv. This novel felt like a world tour. It starts out in the Algerian Sahara Desert and returns to that spot for the denouement.  In between they visit the US, France, and Ireland.

My fifth link also features an unnamed spy, this time working for the CIA ...

The Mulberry Bush by Charles McCarry is about a man whose main focus is getting revenge for his father, a spy for the CIA whose career ended in disgrace. Now the son has succeeded in getting a job with the CIA and is bent on avenging the wrong that Headquarters did to his father. I am currently reading this book and have only about 100 pages left.

I did not realize how many books I have read that have revenge as the prime motivation.

The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake is a classic mystery novel, part of the Nigel Strangeways series. Nicholas Blake was the pseudonym use by Cecil Day-Lewis, who was an Anglo-Irish poet and the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1968 until his death in 1972. In this book, a father seeks revenge for the death of his son, who was killed in a hit-and-run accident. Nigel Strangeways does not show up until midway into the book.

My Six Degrees takes me from a romance set on a fictional late night comedy sketch show set in the US to a classic mystery novel set in Gloucestershire. Along the way I discussed several novels in the spy fiction genre.

If you are participating in the Six Degrees meme this month, where did your links take you? If not, have you read these books? 

The next Six Degrees will be on September 2, 2023, and the starting book will be Wifedom by Anna Funder.

SS-GB: Len Deighton

SS-GB is an alternate history in which England has been invaded by Germany. 

Summary from the flyleaf (dust jacket) of my edition:

1941, and England invaded – and defeated – by the Germans...

The King is a hostage in the tower, the Queen and Princesses have fled to Australia, Churchill has been executed by a firing squad, Englishmen are being deported to work in German factories and the dreaded SS is in charge of Scotland Yard. London is in shock. The very look of daily life is a walking nightmare of German uniforms, artifacts, regulations. There are collaborators. There are profiteers. But there are others working in hope, in secret, and desperate danger, against the invader. And still others are living strangely ambiguous lives – none more so than Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer ("Archer of the yard" as the press like to call him), trying to maintain a peculiarly, almost sacredly, British institution under a Nazi chief.

At the start of the story, Archer is working on what looks like a routine murder case, working under Gruppenführer Fritz Kellerman of the SS. However, that case leads him into encounters with people in the Resistance and he soon has a new assignment, working under an enemy of Kellerman's, Standartenführer Huth, also part of the SS, but under orders from Himmler. 

The people in the resistance who contact him want to rescue the King from the Tower of London and move him to the US. The powers in the US don't want the King to be in North America at all. And there are groups of Germans who are willing to help with any attempt to move the King out the UK. The plot has many twists and turns, and you never know who is trustworthy and who is not. 

My Thoughts:

I have mentioned often on this blog that Len Deighton is one of my favorite authors. I love his writing. This book is no exception. This book is more like his Nameless Spy series in that many of the characters remain a mystery to the reader (or at least to this one). In the Bernard Samson series of nine books you get to know the characters much more. 

Many of Deighton's novels are set in Germany, during the Cold War.  He has a great depth of knowledge of German history, including the years during World War II, so I trust his descriptions of the various German organizations, including the SS, the Gestapo, and the Wehrmacht (military). I find it really hard to keep up with all the military and other titles for the German characters, which is a problem I have with a lot of World War II novels. But that is not the author's fault.

This is a pretty depressing novel; it feels very real and scary. At about 3/4 of the way through I was sure that the story was not going to end well. I was only half right. The ending is ambiguous but hopeful. Nevertheless, I am so glad that I finally read this book, which has been on my TBR pile for 13 years.

We started watching the TV miniseries adaptation of this book (from 2017)  a couple of days after I finished reading the book. It was interesting to see this approach to the book. In the two episodes I have seen so far, it is pretty close to the book, and I like the actor playing Douglas Archer. 

Apparently there are many books depicting an alternate ending to World War II where the Nazis win the war. I have read The Man in the High Castle by Philip Dick, but I have not yet read Fatherland by Robert Harris. This Wikipeda article lists many such depictions in literature and film.

I liked this assessment from Mike Ripley's review at Shots Magazine:

Len Deighton’s SS-GB is a remarkable thriller, starting as a whodunit, morphing into a spy story and then a conspiracy thriller with global implications, but ultimately it is a novel about a decent man trying to do good job of upholding the law even as his world crumbles around him. 

A Summer Challenge: 20 Books of Summer 2023

 

This is my eighth year of participating in the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge. The event is hosted by Cathy at 746 Books. 

This year, 20 Books of Summer starts June 1st and ends September 1st. I completed my list of 20 books in 2018 and 2019, but in other years I had mixed results. 

I always have a problem with reviewing all the books, but this year I am putting my priority on reviewing the books rather than finishing the list. We will see how that goes.

The event is very flexible. You can go for 15 Books of Summer or 10 Books of Summer if 20 is more than you want to commit to. Books can be substituted along the way. And that is fine. See this link for a description of the event. 

Coming up with the list is the best part. Here is my list of books.

Mysteries

Mindful of Murder by Susan Juby

A Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths

Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo

A Man's Head by Georges Simenon

Murder Most Fowl by Bill Crider

The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny 

Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill

Sleep and His Brother by Peter Dickinson

The Mitford Murders by Jessica Fellowes

Spy Fiction

Our Man in Camelot by Anthony Price

SS-GB by Len Deighton (alternative history)

The Mulberry Bush by Charles McCarry

The Doomsday Carrier by Victor Canning

Science Fiction 

The Last Colony by John Scalzi

Fiction

The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff and Frank Doel

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullars

Nonfiction

Jane Austen Cover to Cover by Margaret Sullivan

Number One Is Walking: My Life in the Movies and Other Diversions by Steve Martin, illus. by Harry Bliss (graphic novel)

A Fire Story by Brian Fies (graphic novel)

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Spy Fiction Authors

 

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's topic is a Genre Freebie (pick any genre and build a list for that genre). 

I picked espionage fiction and I am listing my favorite authors in the genre. I limited the list to eight authors. The first two authors are my top two spy fiction authors but beyond that it is hard to decide and the order could change at any time. 

The number of books by the author's name is the number of books that I have read by them.

Charles McCarry (10 books)

I discovered the spy novels of Charles McCarry in 2009 and read them all in a few months (including the two political thrillers that are only peripherally related). Most of the novels written by Charles McCarry are about Paul Christopher, an intelligence agent for the CIA (called "the Outfit" in his books). Some of them go back and forth between events around the World War II years and the 1960's, exploring Christopher's youth and family history. Those nine books were written between 1971 and 2007. McCarry also published The Shanghai Factor in 2013 and The Mulberry Bush in 2015.

Len Deighton (16 books)

Deighton has written two spy fiction series. My favorite is the Bernard Samson series. I have read all nine books in that series, plus Winter, a historical novel which features characters from the Samson series. Deighton is probably best known for his Nameless Spy series (also known as the Harry Palmer series, because of the film adaptations). I have read four of those and I like them, but they are not my favorites of his books. And the great thing about him is I still have at least ten books of his to read.

Anthony Price (5 books)

Anthony Price only wrote 19 novels, all about David Audley, a British spy. I love this kind of spy fiction, which TV Tropes describes as the Stale Beer flavor: more realistic, not romanticizing the subject, grittier. The focus in these books is on characterization and intellect, not action, although there is some of that present. Most of the books in this series have historical events infused into a present day story. In Other Paths to Glory it is World War I and the battlefields of the Somme. In Colonel Butler's Wolf, the site of the story is Hadrian's Wall.

Mick Herron (9 books)

Mick Herron is best known for the Slough House series about MI5 spies who have been demoted due to some disgrace or screw up in their jobs, and are now working under Jackson Lamb. The first book was Slow Horses. I have read 7 books in that series, and the stories get better and better. I still have the last two books in that series to read, plus a stand alone book (set in the same universe as Slough House). And some novellas that are related to the series.

Olen Steinhauer (11 books)

Olen Steinhauer has written twelve full-length novels and I have read all but one of them. His first five novels were historical novels (the Yalta Boulevard series set in a fictional Eastern bloc country) and not strictly spy fiction but there were some espionage elements. After that he began the Milo Weaver series. Weaver is in the CIA; in the first book he is in the "Tourist" division, a group that does dirty work for the CIA. He also wrote a couple of very good standalone novels.

John le Carré (8 books)

I could not do a list like this and not include John le Carré. I don't know exactly how many novels he has written, somewhere between 25 and 30? I have only read 8 of his books, and most of the ones I read featured George Smiley, his best-known character. However, my favorite book by le Carré is A Perfect Spy, about a British spy assigned to an important post in Vienna who disappears after he gets a call that his father has died. It is around 600 pages long and I loved every page of it. John le Carré writes eloquently; he develops his characters bit by bit and pulls me into the story. 

Charles Cumming (5 books)

Charles Cumming has been publishing spy fiction novels since 2001 but his books are relatively new to me. I have only read five of the eleven books he has published. The books I have read and enjoyed are A Spy by Nature (Alec Milius #1 and his first novel), A Foreign Country (Thomas Kell #1), A Colder War (another Thomas Kell book), and Box 88, the beginning of a new series. Box 88 features Lachlan Kite, an agent for a covert spy agency. Kite is abducted, possibly by terrorists, after leaving the funeral of an old friend from boarding school. It turns out that the abduction is related to an event in the late 1980s when Lachlan was just out of boarding school, visiting his friend in France. At that time Lachlan began spying for the Box 88 group, and there are flashbacks to his introduction to the craft of spying. It was an excellent book.

Dan Fesperman (5 books)

I debated whether I should include Dan Fesperman or not. He has written thirteen books, but I am not sure how many of them are spy fiction. I have read several of his books which are combinations of spy fiction and adventure. Examples are The Small Boat of Great Sorrows (set in Bosnia, 1998) and The Arms Maker of Berlin (two time lines, one in 2009, the other in World War II). His most recent series is definitely spy fiction; both Safe Houses and The Cover Wife feature female CIA agents in Germany. And I was very favorable impressed by those books. 

 

These are not the only authors of espionage fiction that I enjoy, but for many of the authors I have only read one book or their focus is on other types of fiction.

I would love to hear from anyone who has opinions about these authors or suggestions for other authors I should try.