Book picks similar to
The Peregrine Spy by Edmund P. Murray


historical-fiction
espionage
adventure
mid-east

National Security


Marc Cameron - 2011
    A public landmark. A suburban shopping mall. And now, the human body itself. Three Middle Eastern terrorists have been injected with a biological weapon, human time bombs unleashed on American soil. They are prepared to die. To spread their disease. To annihilate millions. If America hopes to fight this enemy from within, we need a new kind of weapon. Meet Special Agent Jericho Quinn. Air Force veteran. Champion boxer. Trained assassin. Hand-picked for a new global task force that, officially, does not exist, Quinn answers only to the Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. President himself.His methods are as simple, and as brutal, as his codename.

The Cutout


Francine Mathews - 2001
    A pawn.They were partners — lovers in a business where betrayal is a heartbeat away. CIA analyst Caroline Carmichael lost her husband Eric when his plane was blown out of the sky by an elite group of terrorists known as 30 April.Now her dead husband has surfaced among those responsible for an explosion that rocks Berlin — and the brutal kidnapping of the U.S. Vice President. Uncertain of Eric's motives and loyalties, the Agency plays its last, best card: Eric's wife — the Cutout.Is Eric a rogue agent gone bad? Or has he thrown himself under deep cover to terminate a ruthless psychopath? Caroline is drawn into a dizzying maze where one wrong turn will mean certain death ... and in which the Cutout will be the first to fall.

Covert Action


Dick Couch - 2005
    Now IFOR, the surgical strike team led by former Navy Seal Garrett Walker, returns in an adventure charged with authenticity and suspense.

Exile


Richard North Patterson - 2007
    But when the phone rings and he hears the voice of Hana Arif—the Palestinian woman with whom he had a secret affair in law school—he begins a completely unexpected journey.The next day, the prime minister of Israel is assassinated by a suicide bomber while visiting San Francisco. Soon, Hana is accused of being the mastermind behind the murder. Now David faces an agonizing choice: Will he, a Jew, represent her?The most challenging case of David’s career requires that he delve deep into the lives of Hana and her militant Palestinian husband, all the way back to Israel and the West Bank. There he uncovers the couple’s dangerous connections…culminating in an explosive trial where the stakes are Hana’s life—and the future of two peoples.

Who Is Vera Kelly?


Rosalie Knecht - 2018
    Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She's working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA. Next thing she knows she's in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. As Vera becomes more and more enmeshed with the young radicals, the fragile local government begins to split at the seams. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns war makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows, and she's forced to take extreme measures to save herself.An exhilarating page turner and perceptive coming-of-age story, WHO IS VERA KELLY? introduces an original, wry and whip-smart female spy for the twenty-first century.

Telefon


Walter Wager - 1975
    "Hypnoisis. We collected four hundred and thirty first-class English speakers who'd never left the country, drilled them in every detail of American life and then hand-picked the cream for drug-assisted hypnosis. When we were finished with them, every one believed he was the American whose papers he carried, and each was programmed to detroy a target in the U.S.A. when he received a coded phone message."It was a brilliant plan. But now, at the wrong time, it was being executed by the wrong man. Now the Russians must stop TELEFON by dispatching their own James Bond to the United States.

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 Caliban Program


Richard Fox
    A war Ritter isn't ready for. Al-Qaeda holds an American hostage, and Ritter's history with the kidnapper is the only hope to rescue the American before it's too late. While Ritter is a key player in the search, the CIA considers him an expendable asset. Contains an excerpt from the full length novel, Into Darkness.

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.

The Traitor's Story


Kevin Wignall - 2016
    He has little to go on other than his instincts, and his instincts have been wrong in the past - sometimes spectacularly wrong.But he gets involved anyway, never imagining that Hailey’s disappearance might be linked to the tragic events that ended his career six years earlier, drawing him back into a deadly world that has neither forgiven nor forgotten.

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 Mahdi


A.J. Quinnell - 1981
    — The greatest "miracle" in fourteen hundred years is about to take place...a miracle orchestrated by British Intelligence and the CIA, joined incredibly by the KGB. — One blinding eruption of flame--and three millions Arabs at Mecca will think they're witnessing the arrival on earth of the Mahdi, the reincarnation of Muhammad, fourteen centuries after the prophet's death. It is a plan of immense audacity and unthinkable consequences.

The Spymaster's Lady


Joanna Bourne - 2008
    But Annique Villiers, elusive spy Fox Cub, is thrown in prison with British spymaster Robert Grey, ordered to enter France and bring her back. Their uneasy alliance holds, but passion builds as they flee.

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…

Red Traitor


Owen Matthews - 2021
    For fans of Philip Kerr and Alan Furst. The year is 1962, and KGB Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vasin is chasing a white elephant: the long-rumored existence of an American spy embedded at the highest echelon of Soviet power. In a wild goose chase that has Vasin engaged in high-stakes espionage against a rival State agency, he first hears whispers of an ominous top-secret undertaking: Operation Anadyr.As tensions flare between Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy over Russian missiles hidden in Cuba, four Soviet submarines are ordered to make a covert run at the American blockade in the Caribbean--each sub carrying tactical ballistic missiles armed with thermonuclear warheads.Critically acclaimed novelist Owen Matthews has crafted an incredibly taut thriller around one of the most treacherous moments in modern history, where the fate of the world rested with the itchy trigger finger of one lone Soviet naval officer, 100 meters under the sea, out of all contact with his commanders.