In another year packed with top quality espionage fiction, readers will find a special fascination with Oxford, great literature, and life in exile. Here are our choices for the year’s best spy novels.
Oxford Soju Club, Jinwoo Park
(Dundurn Press)
In this debut novel, a nest of spies is tangled up in Oxford’s Korean community, after a North Korean spymaster is killed in town, setting off a race amongst rival agencies and agents to untangle the old man’s secrets. The novel crafts the perfect pressure cooker atmosphere in the hallowed walls of the old university town, seamlessly blending the academic mystery with the international thriller. Beneath all the high-stakes spy games, there’s a deep vein of humanity running through the story, as well, as readers will be clamoring for more from this talented new author.
Clown Town, Mick Herron
(Soho)
The latest installment in the Slough House / Slow Horses series feels in some ways like an outlier, with so much of its focus on Oxford, secret libraries, and secret spy history, and yet the result is the same signature blend of high-octane thrills and wry humor that fans of Herron’s ragtag crew have come to so passionate enjoy these last years. Herron has done the near impossible, reinventing the spy fiction genre time and again to suit the skewed worldview of his inimitable characters. Jackson Lamb, River Cartwright, Diana Traverner – they’re all here, sorting out the fate of the world, and that’s cause for celebration among readers the world over.
The Poet’s Game, Paul Vidich
(Pegasus)
Vidich proves himself yet again one of the leading practitioners of spy fiction at work today. As ever, there’s a veil of sophistication thrown over the violent implications of the game unfolding between Vidich’s rival agents, creating an atmosphere of restraint and intellect reminiscent of the great le Carré. In The Poet’s Game, a former Moscow station chief now in business in post-Soviet Russia finds himself entangled in a dangerous game of double and triple crossing, with his newly made fortune at stakes, not to mention his and other lives. Vidich has outdone himself with a spy thriller at once utterly cerebral and undeniably compelling.
Pariah, Dan Fesperman
(Knopf)
In Fesperman’s new thriller, a comedian and politician living in semi-disgrace and dissipated exile on the island of Vieques is approached about going on an official state visit to an Eastern European country, where the autocratic leader happens to be one of his biggest fans. This irresistible setup builds to a high point of tension as affairs on the ground in “Bolrovia” prove more complicated than predicted, and the spy games get messier and more dangerous for all involved. Fesperman has a master’s sense of pacing and knows how to control a slow-burn thriller like no other spy novelist around.
The Oligarch’s Daughter, Joseph Finder
(Harper)
A pulse-raising chase unfolds in the New England countryside in The Oligarch’s Daughter, which follows a former Wall Street comer now in hiding, with Russian operatives on his trail and a government conspiracy swirling around the bounty on his head. Finder meticulously unfolds an old Cold War story as the chase plays out, striking a perfect balance for readers who want their action served up with a good dose of complex international affairs and human relationships.
Mrs. Spy, M.J. Robotham
(Aria/Bloomsbury)
Robotham transports readers to 60s London and presents them with a new kind of spy – an operative for MI5 caught up in the city’s Cold War spy games, while also trying her level best to raise a sensible daughter as she works out her deep Beatles obsession. Mrs. Spy is light on its feet and full of fun without ever compromising on the dramatic action.
