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.

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Authors that I have read at least 10 books by

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic is a Freebie, and we can come up with our own topic. I am actually returning to an earlier topic, Authors I've Read the Most Books By. My version will be my Top Ten Authors that I have read at least 10 books by. Keep in mind that I only have records for the last 19 years. But that works fine because these are my current top ten authors, and tastes change over time.

And here's my list:

Rex Stout (54 - 47 Nero Wolfe books plus 3 Tecumseh Fox books plus 4 standalone mysteries)

The Nero Wolfe series began in 1934 with Fer-de-Lance; the last book in the series, A Family Affair, was published in 1975, shortly before Stout's death. I have reread every book in the series several times over the decades.

Nero Wolfe is a lover of orchids and fine food, who supports himself as a private detective, charging exorbitant fees. Archie Goodwin, the narrator of the stories, is both his assistant and a private investigator, and he does most of the legwork. The series combines a genius armchair detective with a hard-boiled detective, and you get the best of both worlds.

Agatha Christie (28 plus)

I love both of Agatha Christie's main sleuths: Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Originally I was irritated by Poirot's self-importance and conceit, but now I find him very charming. And I especially enjoy the books that Hastings narrates. I have other favorite characters that show up in more than one book (Colonel Race, Inspector Japp, Superintendent Battle). And all of the standalone books that I have read so far have been very good.

Emma Lathen (23 plus 4 as R.B. Dominic)

John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice president and director of the trust department of Sloan Guaranty Trust on Wall Street, is the protagonist of Lathen's 24 book series. Banking on Death (1961) is the first in the series, and I reread it in 2017 because the story is set around Christmas. Most of the books are focused on one type of business that is using the services of the Sloan, and the story shares many facts about the running of the specific types of businesses, and the financial relationships. Emma Lathen is the pen name for two American authors: Martha Henissart and Mary Jane Latsis.

Margery Allingham (18)

I think I have only read books from the Albert Campion series. Allingham has a beautiful way of telling a story and creating interesting characters. Albert Campion is a wonderful character, of course, but there is also Albert's manservant, Magersfontein Lugg, a former burglar who has done prison time and has criminal contacts. Campion ages as the series goes on and the character changes over time. And the female characters are well done, intelligent, strong, and independent.

Len Deighton (15)

Now we get to one of my favorite spy fiction authors. I have read all nine of the Bernard Samson series, plus Winter, a historical novel which features characters from the Samson series. He is probably best known for his Nameless Spy series. 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.

Jill McGown - 13

Jill McGown wrote 13 novels in the Chief Inspector Lloyd and Sergeant Judy Hill series, plus five standalone novels. I have only read the books in the series, and I read them all in 2007. The books do not follow a formula. Lloyd and Hill, and their ongoing relationship, are the mainstays of the series, but each book takes a different approach to telling the story.

S. J. Rozan - 12

I was very excited when S.J. Rozan published the 12th book in the Lydia Chin / Bill Smith mystery series last year. That is one my favorite contemporary mystery series and the previous book was published in 2011. Bill Smith is a white private investigator in his forties who lives in Manhattan; Lydia Chin is an American-born Chinese private investigator in her late twenties who lives in New York’s Chinatown with her mother.  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. With that approach, each book reveals more about the personality and the backstory of the two protagonists.

Olen Steinhauer - 11

Another of my favorite spy fiction authors. 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.

Peter Dickinson - 10

Peter Dickinson has written over fifty books for adults and children. Many of his books for adults are mysteries. My favorite book by Dickinson is King & Joker, an alternate history set in an England where George V's elder brother did not die but lived to become King Victor I, and is later succeeded by his grandson, King Victor II. I am also very fond of his unusual mystery series featuring Superintendent Jimmy Pibble. 

Charles McCarry - 10

I discovered the spy novels by 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.

Other authors I have read a good number of books by...

Bill Pronzini - 25
Ruth Rendell - 25

Jane Haddam - 24

Robert Barnard - 22

Patricia Moyes - 19

Ngaio Marsh - 16

P. D. James - 16

What did I read in June 2020?

I read 10 books in June. Half were crime fiction, half were nonfiction or other genres. Some of my reads were for the 20 Books of Summer list or for my Venture Forth Summer Reading prompts, but four were spur of the moment reads. Four books were published in 2018, 2019, or 2020, and that is very unusual for me. 

Only three books were from my TBR pile. One was borrowed from my son, one from my husband. The remainder were new purchases in 2020.

I am not sure I am happy with the low number of vintage or older mysteries I am reading, but I had a great reading month overall.

Nonfiction

North Korea Journal (2019) by Michael Palin

This is a day by day diary of Michael Palin's visit to North Korea for a travel documentary. We watched the documentary after we had all read the book. I knew little about North Korea. The documentary was not an in-depth analysis, but what I learned in this book and the documentary was an eye-opener for me. It was a good read. 

Flu (1999) by Gina Kolata

The subtitle of this book is "The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It." There is much more time spent on the search to find a specimen of the virus strain in the years following the pandemic than on the pandemic itself. I cannot fault the book for that since it is plainly stated on the cover, but I did expect more time spent on the events in 1918 than on medical research during the next eight decades. Don't get me wrong, it is all very interesting and well written, a compelling read. I am now reading The Great Influenza by John M. Barry, published in 2004.

Historical Fiction

Marking Time (1991) by Elizabeth Jane Howard

The Cazalet Chronicles is a series of five books that follow the members of one family from 1937 just prior to World War II through 1957. The first book, The Light Years, covers 1937-1938. There is large cast; the parents plus four children (three brothers, one unmarried sister) and the grandchildren, who range from 5 or 6 to teenage at the start of the series. Marking Time begins in September 1939 and ends in winter 1941. It focuses most on the teenage grandchildren, telling the story from their point of view. Most of the family is living outside of London due to the bombing, although the oldest son is running the family business in London. I am enjoying this series and hope to do a post on the first two books soon.

Science Fiction

The Consuming Fire (2018) by John Scalzi

This is the second book in a science fiction trilogy about an empire of worlds connected by travel via The Flow. My review of the first book in the series, The Collapsing Empire, is here. I enjoyed this sequel just as much as the first and will be reading the third book soon.

Dragonsdawn (1988) by Anne McCaffrey

I am new to the Dragonriders of Pern series. The series can be read in chronological order or publication order. I guess you could just hop around but I would not. Richard Robinson at Tip the Wink explains the differences in his post Reading Pern. Dragonsdawn is the first novel chronologically and it worked well as a starting place for me. 

Crime Fiction

Slight Mourning (1975) by Catherine Aird

#6 in the Inspector Sloan series. Inspector C.D. Sloan is not a flashy policeman. He quietly investigates crimes with the "help" of his usual sidekick Constable Crosby. In this story, they look into the death of a man who dies in a car crash after a dinner party. I plan to read all of the books by Catherine Aird that I can find. I think this is the first time we meet Sloan's wife. I do like to know a bit about a policeman's personal life. 

The Ivory Dagger (1950) Patricia Wentworth

#18 in the Miss Silver series. For those not familiar with the Miss Silver mysteries, Maud Silver is an elderly sleuth. The stories are similar to the Miss Marple series but Miss Silver is actually a private detective. I enjoy these stories. My review here.

An Air That Kills (2019) by Christine Poulson

#3 in the Katie Flanagan series. Flanagan is a  medical researcher and this latest book in the series is very topical, about problems in a lab where research on the influenza virus is taking place. It is a fantastic book, I loved it. My review here.

Aunt Dimity's Death (1992) by Nancy Atherton

Lori Shepherd thought that Aunt Dimity was a fictional character that her mother invented for bedtime stories when she was a child, until she gets a letter from a law firm telling her that she is named in Dimity Westwood's will. In order to get her legacy, Lori has to go to Dimity's cottage in England and research the letters between her mother and Dimity. This is a very light read and not much mystery to it but I did enjoy it and I may read more in the series. (There are now 24 books.)

 

The Last Tourist (2020) by Olen Steinhauer

#4 in the Milo Weaver series, which was originally intended to be a trilogy. The first three books were published in 2009, 2010, and 2012, and eight years later Steinhauer adds a further story. When the series starts, Milo Weaver is a "Tourist," working for the Department of Tourism, a clandestine group of CIA-trained assassins. I liked this one. Olen Steinhauer cannot write a bad book in my opinion. But Books 1 and 3 in the series were the best ones.

 

Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times No. 6

I am participating in the Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times meme, hosted by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness. This time I am looking at newly purchased books. I have bought a lot of books recently and these are just a few of them. Two of them I bought from Daedalus at a discount, but they still were not cheap. Two have only been recently published and they were bought from a local bookseller, Chaucer's Books, with sidewalk pickup. We have done two orders that way since the stores have been closed.


The first book is ...
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, originally published in 1950.

I don't know much about this book except that it is set (at least in part) in Australia. I read On the Beach in 2019; it was on my Classics Club list. I liked that book very much so I asked for recommendations for other books. This was one that was recommended by several bloggers.

Per the back of the book, the heroine is Jean Paget, and the book starts out in Malaysia during World War II and ends up in the Australian outback.

Next is...
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, published this year.

I bought this book because I enjoyed Station Eleven so much, and I read good things about this book. 

The Glass Hotel focuses on two people, a female bartender named Vincent and Paul Alkaitis, who is running an international Ponzi scheme. The financier is based on Bernie Madoff, but other than that the story is entirely fictional. It is not apocalyptic fiction like Station Eleven. But I think the writing style is similar.

The next two books are spy fiction...

A Divided Spy by Charles Cumming, published in 2017

I consider Charles Cumming to be a promising new spy fiction writer (to add to my list of favorites). But the jury is still out. He has published nine novels, starting with A Spy by Nature in 2001, but I did not read any of his books before 2011, when I read The Trinity Six (which was just OK in my opinion). But that might have just been due to my lack of knowledge of the Cambridge spies. Now I know a little more about the subject.

Then, in 2018 I read A Spy by Nature (Alec Milius #1) and in 2019 I read A Foreign Country (Thomas Kell #1). I liked both of those novels and this month I read Thomas Kell #2, A Colder War, and was also impressed with it. Thus I purchased A Divided Spy, to continue reading about Thomas Kell.

Cumming is a Scottish author, and his character in this series is an MI6 agent who is on extended leave with pay due to an incident still under investigation. He is occasionally called in for special assignments.

The next spy fiction author I am featuring is from the US.

The Last Tourist by Olen Steinhauer, published this year.

Olen Steinhauer is already on my list of favorite spy fiction authors. He has published 12 novels and I have read 10 of them and I liked them all. 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.

The Last Tourist is the 4th book in 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. I loved that series so of course I have to read this book. Soon, I hope.

Monthly Reading in February 2019

In February, I read ten books. Four of the books were not crime fiction, although one was a reference book about classic crime ficton. And I read six crime fiction books, published between 1941 and 2015.

Mystery reference

The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (2017) by Martin Edwards

From the introduction by Martin Edwards: "This book tells the story of crime fiction published during the first half of the twentieth century. I see it as a tale of the unexpected. The diversity of this much-loved genre is breathtaking, and so much greater than many critics have suggested. To illustrate this, I have chosen one hundred examples of books which highlight the achievements, and sometimes the limitations, of popular fiction of that era." 

The book is comprised of chapters discussing various types of Golden Age mysteries, with several examples of each type examined in detail. My favorite part was the introduction to each group of books, where many other books and authors are briefly discussed.

Nonfiction

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (2015) by Erik Larson

In telling this story of the events leading to the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, Erik Larson focuses on the Lusitania, the U-boat that attacked the ship, and governmental groups in the US and the UK. This was a very entertaining book and I raced through it. Of course, I knew the basic story, but there was so much I did not know, so there were many surprises.

Graphic novel

Descender, Vol. 1, Tin Stars (2015) by Jeff Lemire (Writer),  Dustin Nguyen (Artist)

One of my reading goals in 2019 is to read more of the graphic novels I have. In this science fiction story, TIM-21 is a robot designed to be a companion to a child. He wakes up from a 10-year long sleep to find that everyone on his world is dead and robots have sort of been outlawed. I will be continuing with this series; this was an intriguing start to the story.

Fiction

The Tin Flute (1945) by Gabrielle Roy

This is a classic Canadian novel, first published in French as Bonheur d'occasion. The book tells the story of the Lacasse family in the St. Henri area in Montreal, during World War II. They are poor, and only the oldest daughter, Florentine, is working. Eugene, the oldest brother, has joined the military. The father, Azarius, is usually unemployed, a dreamer, always leaving one job for a "better" opportunity. It took me a while to get into the story, but about halfway into the book it gripped me and I could not stop reading.

Crime Fiction

Murder in Mykonos (2010) by Jeffrey Siger

This is the first book that features Inspector Andreas Kaldis. In this book he is Police Chief on the island of Mykonos, but in later books he works in other parts of Greece. I am looking forward to reading more of the series. Reviewed here.

A Chill Rain in January (1990) by L.R. Wright

This is the third book in the Karl Alberg series by L. R. Wright. Alberg is a Sergeant in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The novel is set in Sechelt, which is on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia, Canada. I have read books 1 and 2 and will be continuing on with the series. Reviewed here.

A Killing in Quail County (1996) by Jameson Cole

This is a perfect story of growing up in the 1950's in rural Oklahoma. Fifteen-year-old Mark Stoddart lives with his older brother Jess, a deputy sheriff in the small town of Bob White. Mark plans to spend his summer looking for evidence of a local bootlegger, to help out his brother. This turns out to be very complicated and more dangerous than he expected. The teenage characters are depicted especially well.

Evil Under the Sun (1941) by Agatha Christie

A while ago we purchased a set of three films based on mystery novels by Agatha Christie, and one of them was Evil Under the Sun. So I skipped ahead to read this book in the Hercule Poirot series out of order. The setting is the Jolly Rogers Hotel, on Smugglers’ Island, off the coast of Devon. A beautiful woman is killed and the murderer must be one of the guests on the island. As usual for an Agatha Christie novel, this is a clever and entertaining story.

The Shanghai Factor (2013) by Charles McCarry

Charles McCarry is one of my favorite writers of spy fiction and this novel did not disappoint. It is narrated by a young male American spy, working as a sleeper agent for an unnamed US agency, who is living in Shanghai to learn Mandarin. Many of the spy novels I have read have an underlying theme of betrayal and mistrust, and this one is no different.  Reviewed here.

All the Old Knives (2015) by Olen Steinhauer

Olen Steinhauer is another of my favorite authors of spy fiction. This book has an unusual format, taking place during a dinner between two people who used to work together at the CIA station in Vienna. Henry is following up on an investigation into the hijacking of an airliner that occurred when Henry and Carol worked together. During the dinner they both think back to that event and we gradually learn how it turned out. 

Favorite Reads of 2016

Goodreads says that I have read 83 books in 2016, which means I will probably end with a total of 85 books read. I tried to cut my list of favorite books for 2016 down to less than ten, but that did not work, and for the third year I ended up with 11 books on the list.

Four of the books fall in the spy fiction sub-genre. Five of the books were published between 1939 and 1986. Six of the books were published between 2001 and 2016 and three of those were published in 2016.

The links go to my reviews / overviews.

Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout (1939)
As usual, the Nero Wolfe mysteries I read this year were among my top reads (and all were rereads). I chose just one book to represent this author.

Nero Wolfe is well known for his extreme distaste for leaving his home. Some Buried Caesar is one of two novels that I can remember where Wolfe and Archie are away from the brownstone from the beginning to the end of the book. Archie drives Wolfe to an exposition where he will display some of his prize orchids, so the story places Archie and Nero into an environment that they know little about. But my favorite thing about this book is that it introduces Lily Rowan.



She Shall Have Murder by Delano Ames (1948)
A Golden Age mystery, set in post-war London, with rationing, feeding the gasmeters, etc. At the beginning of this book, Jane Hamish is writing a mystery story and Dagobert, her lover, is giving her ideas for the plot. Dagobert is unemployed; Jane works in a lawyer's office. Although at first I found Dagobert very annoying, he grew on me as the book moved along and Jane Hamish and Dagobert Brown quickly became my favorite detecting couple in Golden Age fiction.

From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming (1957)

This is the fifth novel in the James Bond series, the fourth that I read this year, and it is by far my favorite so far. I have always loved the movie, and luckily in this case the movie and the book are very close.

The three previous Bond books I read were more like adventure stories. From Russia with Love sticks closer to the conventional type of spy story I prefer. Early chapters focus on SMERSH agents setting up a plot to assassinate James Bond and our hero doesn't show up until later in the story. The plot is complicated, there is a train trip on the Orient Express with a beautiful enemy agent, and plenty of exotic settings.

The Labyrinth Makers by Anthony Price (1970)
David Audley works for England's Ministry of Defence, but as a researcher, doing behind the scenes work. For his latest assignment he goes out in the field and he is not thrilled with this change. A WWII-era British cargo plane has been discovered at the bottom of a drained lake, complete with the dead pilot and not much else. His job is to figure out why the Soviets are so interested in the empty plane. The beginning of a spy series with eighteen more books, this is just the type of spy fiction I like: a quiet book, a lot of talking and thinking and not a lot of action.

A Perfect Spy by John le Carré (1986)
This is one of seven books I read this year by John le Carré and they were all excellent books. I picked just one of them to represent this author.

Magnus Pym, a British spy assigned to an important post in Vienna, has disappeared. After he gets a call that his father has died, he leaves for the funeral in London, but he doesn't return when expected. British intelligence agents mount a search for him. Being the gifted spy that he is, Pym easily eludes them for the majority of the book. A Perfect Spy revolves around Magnus Pym's relationship with his father, Rick, a con man who uses everyone in his life to achieve his own goals. The story is mostly autobiographical.

Pashazade by John Courtenay Grimwood (2001)
The first book in the Arabesk Trilogy. The story starts with the investigation of a murder, but the chapters skip back and forth in time, sometimes a few days, sometimes going back years in flashbacks. The setting in the present time is El Iskandryia, a North African metropolis in a world where "the United States brokered a deal that ended World War I and the Ottoman Empire never collapsed," as described on the back of the book. So this is an alternate history, sci-fi, coming of age thriller, and just my cup of tea. Pashazade has elements of a police procedural; the crime is investigated by Chief of Detectives Felix Abrinsky, formerly a policeman in Los Angeles, California, and high tech forensics are used .

Sleeping Dogs by Ed Gorman (2008)
The first in a series of five novels about Dev Conrad, a political consultant. In this novel he is working for an Illinois Senator who is running for reelection. The attitude towards politics in this novel is very cynical. Conrad truly wants his candidate to win because he believes he is the better choice of those available, but he does not see one side as bad and the other as good. No political party or ideology is demonized.

Dev Conrad is a great character. Human, not perfect, he cares about people and about his work. The people working on the campaign appear to be a close-knit group but not everyone is what they seem. The story's ending worked very well. It was logical and made sense but was a surprise to me.

An American Spy by Olen Steinhauer (2012)
Steinhauer is close to the top of my list of favorite spy fiction authors. An American Spy was the third book in his Tourist trilogy,  featuring Milo Weaver, CIA agent in the Department of Tourism. "Tourists" are undercover agents with no identity and no home. Milo is not the James Bond type, although there are plenty of thrilling escapades and violence. But we see the other side of this spy's life, the family he wishes he could spend more time with. I enjoyed picking up on Milo Weaver's adventures again. I like the depth of the characters and the exploration of the conflicts in their lives within this framework. The first book in the trilogy is The Tourist, the second is The Nearest Exit.

A Deadly Thaw by Sarah Ward (2016)
This is Sarah Ward's second novel featuring Detective Inspector Francis Sadler and his team. It is a good police procedural, focusing as much on some of the people related to the crime as on the investigative team.

The dead body of a man is found in an abandoned mortuary, located in an overgrown area outside of Bampton, Derbyshire. The deceased was supposedly murdered twelve years before. His wife, Lena, confessed to the crime and served a ten year prison sentence. Thus begins an unusual case which combines an investigation into who was killed years ago with an inquiry into whether the proper procedures were followed at that time. The plot is very complex but not at the expense of the reader's enjoyment.

See Also Deception by Larry D. Sweazy (2016)
This is the second book in a series featuring Marjorie Trumaine, set on a farm in rural North Dakota in 1964. Marjorie is an indexer, creating indexes for non-fiction books. She does this work freelance to make money that she and her husband, Hank, badly need. The area is affected by a drought, with a severe impact on the crops and livestock on the farm. Hank is an invalid due to an accident on the farm and Marjorie shoulders the responsibility for running the farm.

In this book, Marjorie's best friend in the area, a librarian, commits suicide. She begins to suspect that the suicide was faked but the police will not discuss the case with her. In addition to providing an intriguing mystery, the story gives us a vivid picture of what it was like to be a woman at this time, and how difficult it was to be heard in a man's world.

Shot in Detroit by Patricia Abbott (2016)
A novel of psychological suspense, set in 2007 Detroit. It does not paint a pretty picture of that area or the struggle to survive financially in that environment. The story centers on a female photographer who is working on a project to photograph black men who have died much too young. The subject matter is sometimes unsettling and the story is dark.

Violet Hart is the center of this story. She has family issues; her father deserted her family and her sister died when she was young. She has trouble making ends meet and wants very much to succeed in artistic photography. She is not a very likable person, willing to use people to get what she wants, always pushing her agenda first.

An American Spy: Olen Steinhauer

An American Spy (2012) is the third novel in a spy fiction trilogy written by Olen Steinhauer. Milo Weaver works in the Department of Tourism, a division of the CIA that most people don't know about. An agent in that department is a perpetual tourist, with no home, sent on mission after mission, doing whatever job they are given, with no explanation. And many times the assignment is to kill someone. In each of the books in the series, Milo's goal is to stop working as a Tourist, but still he does not reject the need for department itself. However, in each book he is pulled back into the work due to circumstances beyond his control.

Summary from Olen Steinhauer's website:

After the dissolution of the Department of Tourism, Milo’s old boss, Alan Drummond, grows obsessed with revenge against the man who’s destroyed his life: the Chinese spymaster Xin Zhu. When Alan disappears in London, having traveled around the planet, to reach the UK, clues are few and questions numerous. 

In China, Xin Zhu tracks evidence of a conspiracy against him (and his young wife) as he tries to survive the intrigues of Beijing politics. 

In Germany, Erika Schwartz comes across signs that Tourism may not be as dead as it seemed to be. 

In the center of it all is Milo Weaver, trying to stay alive and protect his family in Brooklyn.

In the first book, The Tourist, Milo has acquired a wife and a step-daughter. Since family life and the job of a Tourist cannot coexist, he has a desk job and works as a support person in the department. Throughout the series, his main goal is to keep his family safe. He would be happy to leave the CIA behind and become a normal citizen, but the Department of Tourism is hard to break away from.

The plot centering around Xin Zhu in China was one of my favorite parts. I also enjoyed the inclusion of Milo's father and his estranged half-sister in this book, exploring the importance of family connections in a different way. Milo's father is a former Russian spymaster and U.N. official, and he has ties to many people in the espionage community. He first shows up in the 2nd novel, The Nearest Exit. Although the fact that his father was a spymaster explains some factors in Milo's life and personality, it was an element that seemed a little over the top in that novel. In An American Spy, that story line seems to work better.

These books are full of action. I do prefer quieter, more cerebral spy novels, but it does keep the pace up. The plots border on the unbelievable, but that is fairly common in spy fiction, and I have no problem suspending my disbelief. I like the depth of the characters and the exploration of the conflicts in their lives within this framework.

Steinhauer's spy fiction has been compared to that of Graham Greene, Len Deighton, and John le Carré. I haven't read enough of Greene to speak to that. I would say he is closer to le Carré if we must make comparisons. On the other hand, in Deighton's Bernard Samson series, Bernard's family, especially his two children, are always his main concern. But, the point here is that if you like the writings of Deighton or le Carré, you definitely should give the Tourist trilogy a try. It is best if the books are read in the order published.

If you shy away from spy thrillers, you might find Steinhauer's other series a better fit. Some of those novels do have some of the elements of espionage fiction, but are historical fiction as well. The author describes them as "five novels that traced the history of an unnamed, fictional Eastern European country during its communist period, from 1948 until 1989, one book for each decade. The novels began as crime fiction, morphing gradually into espionage." There is not one main character but the characters are linked from one book to another.

The titles are, in order of publication:

The Bridge of Sighs
The Confession
36 Yalta Boulevard (The Vienna Assignment in the UK)
Liberation Movements (The Istanbul Variations in the UK)
Victory Square

See these reviews:

• At the Los Angeles Times, a review by Paula L. Woods. I am currently reading the first book in her Charlotte Justice series.
• Bill Selnes review at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan.

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Publisher:   Minotaur Books, 2012
Length:      386 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Series:       The Tourist trilogy #3
Setting:      US, UK, China, Germany
Genre:        Espionage fiction
Source:      I purchased my copy.

Reading in June 2016

In June, I read six books, all of them crime fiction.

• The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré
• The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie
• Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout
• A Perfect Spy by John le Carré
• Murder Among Friends by Elizabeth Ferrars
• An American Spy by Olen Steinhauer

There is no way I could pick a favorite book this month. I read three books that I regarded as excellent books: A Perfect Spy, Some Buried Caesar, and An American Spy. The authors of those books, John le Carré, Rex Stout, and Olen Steinhauer respectively, are among my favorite authors. The other three books were also very enjoyable reads. I rarely consider a book I have read to be a clunker, but sometimes there are books that just are not my thing. Not this month. A wonderful month of reading.

I continue to read mostly spy fiction. The Honourable Schoolboy by le Carré is one of the Smiley novels. A Perfect Spy and The American Spy are both obviously spy novels, and The Seven Dials Mystery is a lighter version of the espionage fiction genre.

An American Spy is the third book in a trilogy by Olen Steinhauer, and I waited nearly two years to finish this series. Milo Weaver works for the CIA, in the Department of Tourism. "Tourists" are described as undercover agents with no identity and no home. Milo is not the James Bond type, although there are plenty of thrilling escapades and violence. But we see the other side of this spy's life, the family he wishes he could spend more time with. I did enjoy picking up on Milo Weaver's adventures again. The first book in the trilogy is The Tourist, the second is The Nearest Exit.

Favorite Reads of 2014

I read lots of books this year, mainly mystery novels as usual. I wish I could read twice as many books in a year. I neglected Agatha Christie and Ed McBain totally this year, and I had wanted to start reading Elmore Leonard and read much more of Len Deighton's books than I did.

I did read many great books by wonderful authors this year. I enjoyed almost all of them and it is hard to narrow it down to the ones that really resonated with me. But here is my stab at a list. I did go over 10 books but not by much.

The Danger Within by Michael Gilbert. 
Published in 1952, it is an exceptional story of men incarcerated in a prison camp in Italy toward the end of World War II. The book also includes a mystery, featuring an amateur detective, a prisoner in the camp who is asked to look into the circumstances of the death of a fellow prisoner.

The Little Shadows by Marina Endicott 
This is a historical novel set in the years preceding and during World War I (and the only non-mystery fiction on this list). It is the story of three sisters, teenagers as the story begins, who travel with their mother to support the family as a vaudeville act. I am very interested in vaudeville, and I don't know as much as I would like about the history of vaudeville. I found this book very readable, entertaining, with interesting characters.

Touchstone by Laurie R. King
This historical novel is set in the UK in 1926 and the story centers around the weeks leading up to the general strike. Harris Stuyvesant is an agent of the United States Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation, and he has arrived in England to track down the man responsible for terrorist bombings in the US.

The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer
A spy thriller, which takes place during the activities of the Arab Spring, in February 2011. Sophie Kohl's husband Emmett is currently working at the American embassy in Hungary, but his previous assignment was in Cairo. Both of them have friends still in Cairo, and when Emmett is killed, Sophie seeks the reasons for his death there. 

Time's Witness by Michael Malone
This is the second book in a police procedural series. Cuddy Mangum is the narrator and the Chief of Police in Hillston, North Carolina. Cuddy is educated, but he is not refined, and to the powerful and rich inner circle of Hillston residents, he is a redneck. The book was published in 1989 and set around the same time period. The story in this book centers on George Hall, a black man arrested seven years earlier for killing a white cop. He is now on death row and supporters are seeking a reprieve or pardon. 

Eleven Days by Donald Harstad
Carl Houseman is a deputy sheriff working the night shift in the small town of Maitland, Iowa. He is sent to the scene of a crime after a 911 call comes in. At the scene, he finds a dead man but the woman who made the call is not found. By the next morning, a second crime scene has been found with three more bodies, and the two crimes seem to be related. The small department, with the help of state investigative agencies, works for the next eleven days to solve the crime.

9tail Fox by Jon Courtenay Grimwood 
This novel is fantasy blended with mystery, and the mystery elements were stronger in this novel than in many cross-genre novels. In addition to the noir thriller elements, this is the story of a journey of a man to understanding himself and his isolation from others. I enjoyed the book as much for the personal story of Bobby Zha as for the mystery.

I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes
I am very fond of espionage fiction, so it is no surprise that I liked this. The central character, the spy who has run an elite espionage unit in the past, has had many identities and many code names. Of those who even know of him, he is a legend. But he has reached a point in his life when he has left spying behind and is in a new untraceable identity.  Then several events come together to force him back into the spy game.

World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters 
Book III in the The Last Policeman trilogy, following the activities of policeman Hank Palace in a pre-apocalyptic world. An asteroid is headed for earth, and from the beginning of the series we know that it will be devastating. I also read Countdown City, Book II in the series, this year, and I rated it as highly as this one. In this final book, Hank goes on an odyssey to try to locate his sister before the asteroid hits.

Enigma by Robert Harris
Set in 1943, this book uses Bletchley Park and the code breaking efforts there as a background for a mystery. Tom Jericho had left Bletchley to recuperate in Cambridge after a nervous breakdown resulting from the stress of his work. Now he is asked to return to help in a new effort to break Enigma codes.

Garnethill by Denise Mina
Set in the city of Glasgow, this novel deals with tough topics: incest, patient abuse, drugs, unemployment, dysfunctional families. It is a very dark story. There is an optimistic resolution, but many of the characters in the book are not very pleasant people. Nor is there the possibility for a truly happy ending.

Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise is collecting lists of  top crime fiction reads for 2014. Check them out HERE.