The Drumbeater


Clive Allan - 2013
    The task of unravelling the mystery falls to history graduate Neil Strachan, now a career cop, fast tracked into a new role on Northern Scotlands Major Enquiry Unit. When Neil calls upon German naval historian, Matthias Fuchs, to help identify the remains, a name soon emerges, that of a dashing young U-boat ace who mysteriously disappeared in 1941: Korvettenkapitän Max Friedmann. Neil seeks the assistance of Glendaig’s elderly residents, but encounters an impenetrable wall of silence, causing him to suspect that they know far more about the young submariner than they are willing to impart. With more questions than answers, and under mounting pressure from his cynical boss to wrap up the enquiry, Neil embarks on a race against time to discover the truth. He begins to unravel a tale of subterfuge, escape and astounding loyalty. A tale that will ultimately reveal a secret that could have changed the course of World War Two...

Jet


Russell Blake - 2012
    But the past doesn't give up on its secrets easily.When her new life on a tranquil island is shattered by a brutal attack, Jet must return to a clandestine existence of savagery and deception to save herself and those she loves. A gritty, unflinching roller-coaster of high-stakes twists and shocking turns, JET features a new breed of protagonist that breaks the mold.Fans of Lizbeth Salander, SALT, and the Bourne trilogy will find themselves carried along at Lamborghini speed to a conclusion as jarring and surprising as the story's heroine is unconventional.

Corpus


Rory Clements - 2016
    ______________________________ 1936 - Europe is in turmoil. The Nazis have marched into the Rhineland. In Russia, Stalin has unleashed his Great Terror. Spain has erupted in civil war. In Berlin, a young Englishwoman evades the Gestapo to deliver vital papers to a Jewish scientist. Within weeks, she is found dead, a silver syringe clutched in her fingers. In an exclusive London club, a conspiracy is launched that threatens the very heart of government. When a renowned society couple with fascist leanings are found brutally murdered, a maverick Cambridge professor is drawn into a world of espionage he knows only from history books. The deeper Thomas Wilde delves, the more he finds to link the murders with the girl with the silver syringe - and even more worryingly to the scandal surrounding the Abdication . . . Set against the gathering drumbeat of war and moving from Berlin to Cambridge, from Whitehall to the Kent countryside, and from the Fens to the Aragon Front in Spain, this sweeping international thriller, like C J Sansom's WINTER IN MADRID, marks the beginning of a brilliant new series for Rory Clements. What the critics are saying about CORPUS: 'Dramatic . . . pacy and assured . . . Well crafted, it has all the pleasures of an intriguing lead character, intricate plot and fascinating historical context' Daily Mail 'Rory Clements's timely spy thriller set in the 1930s evokes a period of political polarisation, mistrust and simmering violence. Corpus is fast-paced and there are plenty of red herrings to keep you guessing. This is the first of a promising series and Wilde is a likeable hero' The Times 'This clever novel, rich in deceptions and intrigue, shows the reach of Stalin and Hitler into every class of British society, threatening violence on horrific scale. Corpus is a standout historical novel and spy thriller' Daily Express

Night Over Water


Ken Follett - 1991
    England is at war with Nazi Germany. In Southampton, the world’s most luxurious airliner—the legendary Pan Am clipper—takes off for its final flight to neutral America. Aboard are the cream of society and the dregs of humanity, all fleeing the war for reasons of their own…shadowed by a danger they do not know exists…and heading straight into a storm of violence, intrigue, and betrayal…

A Brewing Storm


Richard Castle - 2012
    He had to fake his own death. So when his former boss calls in an old favor that will bring Storm out of early retirement and back to Washington to investigate a high-profile kidnapping, he knows there must be more at stake than the life of a Senator's son. Working alongside, but not exactly with, bombshell FBI investigator April Showers, Storm must make sense of a confusing flurry of ransom notes and a complicated web of personal relationships and international politics. He'll get to the bottom of the kidnapping, but the storm is still brewing.

The Incident: Inferno Rising


Lars Emmerich - 2016
    People are trying to kill her.That would be business as usual in the counterespionage world, except that it’s the good guys who have her in the crosshairs. Why are the DC Metro police trying to kidnap her? Do her bosses at Homeland want her in a body bag, too?And why does everyone she talks to seem to end up in the morgue?Will a ruthless mercenary, a hapless American traitor, and a dead man’s cryptic clue hold the key to Sam’s survival?

Eye of the Storm


Jack Higgins - 1992
    Now Dillon is a terrorist for hire, a master of disguise employed by Saddam Hussein. Brosnan is the one man who knows Dillon’s strengths and weaknesses … and brilliant mastery of espionage. — Once friends, now enemies, they are playing the deadliest game of their careers. A game that culminates in a frightening -- and true -- event: Iraq’s attempted mortar attack on the British war cabinet at 10 Downing Street in February 1991.

The Ninja


Eric Van Lustbader - 1980
    A sprawling erotic thriller that swings from postwar Japan to present-day New York in a relentless saga of violence and terror elaborately designed for the most savage vengeance of all...

The Perfect Assassin


Ward Larsen - 2004
    Christine Palmer, a young American doctor sailing solo across the Atlantic, makes an incredible discovery - a man narrowly clinging to his life in the frigid waters. But there is much more to this desperate survivor than meets the eye. David Slaton is a Kidon - a highly-trained, highly-precise, and highly-dangerous assassin. The Kidon is both the hunter and the hunted, and he and Christine are in grave danger. Will they win in this race against time?With the precision of a sharpshooter, author Ward Larsen weaves an intricate tale of espionage and intrigue.

Black Site


Dalton Fury - 2012
    Now, Fury draws upon his hard-won combat experience ”and his gift for true-to-life storytelling” to offer a brand-new series of thrillers that are as close to reality as readers can get.Meet Kolt Raynor. A Delta Force operator and one-time American hero, he is still trying to make sense of his life ”and duty” after a secret mission gone bad. Three years ago, in the mountains of Pakistan, Raynor made a split-second decision to disobey orders ”one that got some of his teammates killed and the rest captured. Now he's been given a second chance to do right by his country, his men, and himself. But Raynor's shot at redemption comes at a price.A shadowy group of former colleagues has asked Raynor to return, alone, to Pakistan's badlands. His assignment seems clear: find his missing men and bring them home. What Raynor never expected was to uncover a sinister al Qaeda plot to capture a Black Site--a secret U.S. prison--and destabilize the region. Meanwhile, a ruthless, unknown enemy is on his trail…and he will stop at nothing to make sure that Raynor's mission is not accomplished.An intense, gritty work of edge-of-your-seat suspense, Black Site is the first of what promises to be one of the most exciting fiction series of the new millennium.

Berlin Game


Len Deighton - 1983
    But soon, Samson is confronted with evidence that there is a traitor among his colleagues. And to find out who it is, he must sift through layers of lies and follow a web of treachery from London to Berlin until hero and traitor collide.From the Paperback edition.

The House of Closed Doors


Jane Steen - 2012
    Yet Nell is determined to elude the duties and restrictions of matrimony. So when she finds herself pregnant at the age of 17, she refuses to divulge the name of the father and even her childhood friend Martin is kept in the dark.Nell's stepfather Hiram sends Nell to live at the Poor Farm of which he is a governor, to await the day when her baby can be discreetly adopted. Nell is ready to go along with Hiram's plans until an unused padded cell is opened and two small bodies fall out.Nell is the only resident of the Poor Farm who is convinced that the unwed mother and her baby were murdered, and the incident prompts her to rethink her decision to abandon her own child to her fate. But the revelations to which her questions lead make her realize that even if she manages to escape the Poor Farm with her baby, she may have no safe place to run to.

Thursday at Noon


William F. Brown - 1987
    John Kennedy is in the White House, Khrushchev is in the Kremlin, and Abdel Gamal Nasser is in Cairo. While everyone is focused on the Russian missiles in Cuba that are pointed at the US, no one notices the even more deadly ones in Egypt now pointed at Israel, no one, except Richard Thomson, a failed, burned out CIA agent who had been dumped there after his last mission blew up in his face and they couldn’t think of any place worse to send him. Already gnawed on by Langley, the US Ambassador, and even the Cairo cops, he didn’t think his day could get much worse until someone left a dead body on the rear steps of his hotel. Its head had been lopped off like a ripe melon and placed so it looked back down at its own body. A message? No doubt about it. But for whom? The body belongs to Mahmoud Yussuf, a fat petty thief and inept spy who is trying to sell photographs of a long-abandoned RAF base in the Egyptian desert. What those photos have to do with a dead Israeli Mossad agent, Nazi rocket scientists, the fanatical Moslem Brotherhood, and two missing Egyptian tank regiments could start the next Arab-Israeli War or stop it. Alone and on the run, no one believes Thomson's story -- not the CIA, the US Ambassador, and most assuredly not Captain Hassan Saleh, Chief of the Homicide Bureau of the Cairo Police, who wants to hang Thomson for murder. Like Night of the Generals, this is a murder mystery wrapped inside a spy thriller and historic fiction. The sultry slums of Cairo are a tinder box of discontent and the first faint whiffs of a military coup against the shaky, new government of Abdel Gamal Nasser are in the air. In this CIA action adventure and suspense thriller, if Tomson doesn’t solve the mystery, something is about to blow up in his face at Noon on Thursday. Tick Toc, Tick Toc…

Come Spy With Me


Max Allan Collins - 2020
    Sand’s real-life exploits inspired a very famous series of best-selling novels by a friend in the spy game.On his honeymoon with his new wife, Stacey Boldt – the heiress to a Texas oil fortune – they are interrupted by an unfriendly blast from the past.Now an executive with Boldt Oil in Houston, Sand finds himself, and his bride, pulled back into the world of espionage when JFK himself recruits him for a dangerous job in Cuba.Sand – and Mrs. Sand – will be caught up in everything from a Rat Pack party in Vegas hosted by a mobster to a Caribbean island where a deadly assassin has targeted El Presidente.Come Spy With Me is the first in The John Sand Series, invoking the best of the original James Bond spy thrillers.

The Girl Who Heard Everything


Jack Lewis - 2017
    A chilling wind. A terrible crime that they had to hide. They thought they were alone, but she heard everything.Disgraced news presenter Emma Underhill goes back to her childhood village to recover from an eye operation. She had vowed never to go back there, and she knows that old enemies wait for her in the sleepy place, yearning for revenge for something she did early in her career.On the way there, her brother-in-law stops to meet a friend. Emma gets out of the car. With her eyes covered in bandages, all she can see is darkness. The countryside is a lonely place, and with Mark gone she feels alone.And then she hears noises. A man and a woman are at the bottom of the hill. She hears the sound of a shovel hitting the earth, and then the couple’s voices as they talk about burying a body. She tries to back away, but they know she’s there.Someone is dead, and only Emma heard the killers’ voices. Then it hits her; they saw her. They know what she looks like. She realises that they could be anybody. The village becomes a sinister place, where every person she passes could be one of the murderers. Who are they? Who did they kill?Nobody in the village believes her. As Emma tries to find out the truth, the killers make it clear they won’t leave her alone. They won’t rest until she leaves the village. If she stays, they’ll make sure she can never tell anyone.