Book picks similar to
Debut for a Spy by Harry Currie


thriller
mystery
ebook
mystery-thriller

The Chemist


Stephenie Meyer - 2016
    She used to work for the U.S. government, but very few people ever knew that. An expert in her field, she was one of the darkest secrets of an agency so clandestine it doesn't even have a name. And when they decided she was a liability, they came for her without warning. Now she rarely stays in the same place or uses the same name for long. They've killed the only other person she trusted, but something she knows still poses a threat. They want her dead, and soon. When her former handler offers her a way out, she realizes it's her only chance to erase the giant target on her back. But it means taking one last job for her ex-employers. To her horror, the information she acquires only makes her situation more dangerous. Resolving to meet the threat head-on, she prepares for the toughest fight of her life but finds herself falling for a man who can only complicate her likelihood of survival. As she sees her choices being rapidly whittled down, she must apply her unique talents in ways she never dreamed of. In this tautly plotted novel, Meyer creates a fierce and fascinating new heroine with a very specialized skill set. And she shows once again why she's one of the world's bestselling authors.

The Rescue


Steven Konkoly - 2019
    Hired by an influential US senator to liberate his daughter from a human-trafficking ring, Decker never anticipated sabotage or that the assault could go so disastrously wrong. The hostage is dead. His team is wiped out, and so are their families, including Decker’s own wife and son—eliminated one by one by the Russian mafia. And he’s survived to take the fall.When he’s inexplicably freed soon into a ten-year sentence in federal prison, Decker suspects another setup. And private investigator Harlow Mackenzie knows he’s right. She has evidence that a power greater than the Russian mob was behind the raid that ruined Decker’s life.The next move in a nationwide cat-and-mouse game of high-level sedition is up to them. Fueled by revenge and an obsession to clear his name, Decker has only one mission: to destroy a growing conspiracy before it’s too late.

The Diplomat's Wife


Michael Ridpath - 2021
    But when she marries an ambitious diplomat, she must leave her ideals behind and live within the confines of embassy life in Paris and Nazi Berlin. Then one of Hugh's old comrades reappears, asking her to report on her philandering husband, and her loyalties are torn.1979: Emma's grandson, Phil, dreams of a gap-year tour of Cold War Europe, but is nowhere near being able to fund it. So when his beloved grandmother determines to make one last trip to the places she lived as a young diplomatic wife, and to try to solve a mystery that has haunted her since the war, he jumps at the chance to accompany her. But their journey takes them to darker, more dangerous places than either of them could ever have imagined...'Thoroughly engaging. Prewar Europe has rarely been evoked with the skill that Ridpath displays here.' Financial Times

NanoStrike


Pete Barber - 2012
    First responder, Detective Chief Inspector Quinnborne, defies orders and hunts for the weapon’s unhinged genius creator. The authorities label Quinnborne a traitor, but when the nanotechnology spirals out of control, his grit and bloody-minded determination become humankind’s last thin hope of surviving a weapon of mass destruction that can be deployed at will and against which there is no defense.

One Rough Man


Brad Taylor - 2011
    Their existence is as essential as it is illegal. Commissioned at the highest level of the U.S. government. Protected from the prying eyes of Congress and the media. Built around the top operators from across the clandestine, intelligence, and special forces landscape. Designed to operate outside the bounds of U.S. law. Trained to exist on the ragged edge of human capability.Pike Logan was the most successful operator on the Taskforce, his instincts and talents unrivaled-until personal tragedy permanently altered his outlook on the world. Pike knows what the rest of the country might not want to admit: The real threat isn't from any nation, any government, any terrorist group. The real threat is one or two men, controlled by ideology, operating independently, in possession of a powerful weapon. Buried in a stack of intercepted chatter is evidence of two such men. The transcripts are scheduled for analysis in three months. The attack is mere days away. It is their bad luck that they're about to cross paths with Pike Logan. And Pike Logan has nothing left to lose.

Dig Two Graves


Kim Powers - 2015
    After a hushed-up scandal over his Olympics win and the death of his wife in a car accident five years ago, Ethan wants nothing more than to forget his past. Skip is not only the light of Ethan's life--she is his life. Then, Skip is kidnapped. A series of bizarre ransom demands start coming in that stretch Ethan's athletic prowess to its limits, and he realizes with growing horror that they are modern versions of the Twelve Labors of Hercules, demanded in tricky, rhyming clues by someone who seems to have followed every step of Ethan's career.

Stigma


Philip Hawley Jr. - 2007
    physician and former secret member of a black ops unit of the Navy SEALS who vows to get to the bottom of an unidentifiable illness that killed a young Guatemalan boy. His investigation, however, only succeeds in putting his life and those of his loved ones in mortal danger. After the boy -- who was flown all the way to Los Angeles from Central America -- inexplicably dies, McKenna orders an autopsy, only to find himself stymied by hospital administrators who are obviously trying to cover something up. McKenna realizes that a conspiracy of international proportions is being pulled off: The boy's body is suddenly transported back to Guatemala and a former lover and employee of pharmaceutical giant Zenavax is found murdered just minutes after she called McKenna, desperately wanting to meet with him. Framed for her murder, the E.R. doctor must use all of his former military training to stay alive long enough to identity the true villain Hawley Jr. joins a growing number of doctors-turned-novelists (Daniel Kalla, Allen Wyler, et al.) who have reinvigorated the medical suspense genre with their terrifyingly insightful speculation. Chillingly realistic and utterly readable, Philip Hawley Jr. could very well be the next Robin Cook. Paul Goat Allen

The Gray Man


Mark Greaney - 2009
    But he’s a great assassin. To those who lurk in the shadows, he’s known as the Gray Man. He is a legend in the covert realm, moving silently from job to job, accomplishing the impossible and then fading away. And he always hits his target. Always. But there are forces more lethal than Gentry in the world. Forces like money. And power. And there are men who hold these as the only currency worth fighting for. And in their eyes, Gentry has just outlived his usefulness. But Court Gentry is going to prove that, for him, there’s no gray area between killing for a living and killing to stay alive…

A Foreign Country


Charles Cumming - 2012
    Days later, a meticulously-planned kidnapping takes place on the streets of Paris. Amelia Levene, the first female Chief of MI6, has disappeared without a trace, six weeks before she is due to take over as the most influential spy in Europe. It is the gravest crisis MI6 has faced in more than a decade. Desperate not only to find her, but to keep her disappearance a secret, Britain's top intelligence agents turn to one of their own: disgraced MI6 officer Thomas Kell. Tossed out of the Service only months before, Kell is given one final chance to redeem himself - find Amelia Levene at any cost. The trail leads Kell to France and Tunisia, where he uncovers a shocking secret and a conspiracy that could have unimaginable repercussions for Britain and its allies. Only Kell stands in the way of personal and political catastrophe.

The Depths


Kirk Kjeldsen - 2018
    And it does, as they enjoy trading thebustle of their Shanghai life behind for the idyllic tropical paradise.But while on a diving excursion, they're taken hostage by a group ofterrorists, who take them to a remote island and hold them there forransom. The longer that time drags on, though, the more doubts Marahbegins to have about their captors' true motivations.

Contract: Snatch


Ty Hutchinson - 2015
    Payment isn’t monetary; instead, it’s information leading to the whereabouts of a little girl. Hers.In a matter of seconds, Sei is pulled back into a world she left behind. She accepts the contract to chase the truth about her daughter, but what appears to be a routine mission turns into a fight for survival. If Sei is to have any hope of reuniting with her child, she must first save herself.

Ghost Station


Dan Wells - 2019
    1961. Two months after the Wall. And the Cold War is threatening to boil over. It is an especially uneasy time at The Cabin, a joint US-West German listening station. Its agents failed to see the Wall coming. And now the East Germans and their Soviet allies are making new, aggressive moves. Then, CIA cryptographer Wallace Reed decodes the latest message from the double agent known as Longshore—and the crisis escalates. Has Longshore been caught? Suborned? Murdered? Or, the worst possibility of all—is he trying to send a secret code to a mole in Reed’s own office, sabotaging their intelligence and sending reports back to the other side? Ghost Station is a tense thriller about espionage, cryptography, and paranoia, set in the earliest days of the Berlin Wall. Can Reed trust Longshore? His boss? His lover? Can he find the truth behind the lies—or will Berlin become ground zero for a world-ending war?

The Colonel's Mistake


Dan Mayland - 2012
    But his peace is shattered by both the assassination of a high-level American during an international oil conference and the arrest of CIA operations officer Daria Buckingham for the crime. Sava knows the Iranian American Buckingham well—he personally trained her—and doesn’t believe she had anything to do with the murder, so he visits a CIA control center to discuss the situation with the new station chief. When no one answers the outside intercom, Sava overrides the security code and stumbles upon the grisliest scene of his career. Now, he can’t help but wonder if he really knows Buckingham as well as he thought… Determined to find out, Sava soon finds himself and a partner caught in the middle of the new Great Game—a deadly intelligence war over oil that has Iran, China, and the United States clawing at each other’s throats. Meanwhile, Colonel Henry Amato, assistant to the U.S. national security advisor, is keeping a close watch on the situation from Washington. His stake in the Great Game is high—and personal. From the shadows of the world’s most volatile region to the highest levels of Washington politics, The Colonel’s Mistake takes readers on an unforgettable ride where the good, the bad, and the brutal play a deadly chess game of global espionage.

The Snowman of Zanzibar


Gordon Wallis - 2018
     The endless London winter had been bitterly cold. The steady work as a freelance insurance fraud investigator was mundane and repetitive, but this suddenly changes early on a frozen February morning. The wealthy client was desperate. Just how was his high flying young son making so much money? It sounded like a dream assignment. An escape from the city and a bit of travel. And for a while it was. But on an idyllic island paradise, someone is watching, and a deadly criminal cartel operates quietly in the shadows. As Green digs deeper he uncovers the truth, but a series of unfortunate events occur. Events far beyond his control. Events that result in unspeakable violence and horror. The cartel must be stopped, but who will be the next to die? The action comes hard and fast in this gripping 1st in series page turner and culminates in an ending that will stay in your mind for a long time. A very, very long time... Pick up The Snowman Of Zanzibar today and prepare for the ride of your life.

Slow Horses


Mick HerronMick Herron - 2010
    London, England: Slough House is where the washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what's left of their failed careers. The "slow horses," as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated here. Maybe they messed up an op badly and can't be trusted anymore. Maybe they got in the way of an ambitious colleague and had the rug yanked out from under them. Maybe they just got too dependent on the bottle—not unusual in this line of work. One thing they all have in common, though, is they all want to be back in the action. And most of them would do anything to get there─even if it means having to collaborate with one another.River Cartwright, one such “slow horse,” is bitter about his failure and about his tedious assignment transcribing cell phone conversations. When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, River sees an opportunity to redeem himself. But is the victim who he first appears to be? And what’s the kidnappers’ connection with a disgraced journalist? As the clock ticks on the execution, River finds that everyone has his own agenda.