When Hannah Arendt introduced the word totalitarianism into the English language in 1951, she had in mind the Stalinist and Nazi regimes in the USSR and Germany. But, as later scholars have made clear. neither government had achieved a level of control over its citizenry that could be described as...
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Uncle Nathan is a gangster, and Daniel’s father—a judge, no less—wants him to stay as far away as possible from his crooked brother. Then the problem solves itself. A disagreement—the kind you don’t walk away from alive for long—persuades Uncle Nate to leave Berlin for the United...
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David Ignatius writes a column twice a week on foreign affairs for the Washington Post. That’s his day job. But he moonlights as a spy novelist. In eight conventional spy thrillers published from 1987 to 2011, he detailed the give-and-take in the intelligence game between the United States...
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A real war in space might already have broken out in the skies above Ukraine. In Low Earth Orbit (LEO) a thousand miles up, some 4,000 Space X Starlink satellites share space with the International Space Station and the Hubble Telescope. As we learned in 2022, Ukraine’s armed forces depended...
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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Shane Collins is fifty-two and divorced, a heavy drinker two months into his last posting for the CIA. It’s 2012, and the Middle East is aflame in the Arab Spring. King Jassim of Bahrain, as much as any ruler, is vulnerable. Seventy percent of the population...
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On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, setting off a fast march to German reunification. But it was not a singular event, arising out of the blue. Because the reform movement launched by Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow four years earlier had triggered a series of increasingly assertive protest...
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A century ago, they called themselves anarchists. But we today would think of them as terrorists. After all, they had shocked the world again and again with their bombs and bullets. Anarchists had assassinated Tsar Alexander II of Russia in 1881, Empress Elisabeth of Austria in 1898, King Umberto...
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When I was born, shortly before the United States entered World War II, the Great War of 1914 to 1918 was an active living memory for many adults. Today, a century after the last of the sixteen peace treaties ending the conflict was signed at Lausanne in 1923, almost no one remembers. We rely on...
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Estimated reading time: 7 minutes You don’t need a career in the CIA or MI6 to write a great spy novel, but it helps. And former CIA analyst David McCloskey put his expertise on display two years ago in Damascus Station, his terrific debut in the genre. Now he’s done it again with a...
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We all have secrets. . . Secrets are a part of our lives and the lives of literature’s great characters. But spies operate in a more complex world of secrets—things they hide from family, from friends, and from themselves. I found the double lives of spies as a compelling premise to explore.” And...
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By my count, Mick Herron has written a total of eleven books in the Slough House series since the first, Slow Horses, appeared in 2010. (Three are novellas and not always included in the list.) His latest, a funny new spy novel called The Secret Hours, is a standalone work, but only nominally so....
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Estimated reading time: 7 minutes When the world’s best spy agencies come to mind, it’s rare that the Mossad isn’t among them. Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, known domestically as “the Institute” (Hebrew: Mossad), has gained a...
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At the conclusion of Secret Service, the first novel in Tom Bradby’s new thriller series, Kate Henderson’s life lay shattered. Her loving husband, Stuart, had surfaced as an agent for the SVR, the KGB’s successor, and defected to Moscow. Now, in the opening of the sequel, Double...
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Estimated reading time: 7 minutes At the time, few if any inside the Agency would have called him a “mole.” That term didn’t enter wide use until the publication in 1974 of John le Carré’s novel, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. But for a decade in the 1960s and 70s, the...
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Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg are the best known of the 28,000 Righteous Among the Nations. All were non-Jews from fifty-one countries recognized by Israel’s holocaust museum, Yad Vashem. The Irish priest Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty is much less well known, and joined the list...
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Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Americans are sometimes surprised to learn just how many Russian oligarchs have gravitated to the UK. A March 2022 article in The New Yorker is entitled, “How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London,” and it’s not too wide off the mark. As a local...
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Spy novels are full of stories about the hunt for moles in the CIA, MI6, and other intelligence agencies. It’s less common to come across a tale in which the mole is embedded in the uppermost reaches of the political establishment. And perhaps that’s no coincidence. Authors of spy...
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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Joseph Kanon’s historical spy novels reek of authenticity. Set in the years immediately following World War II, they conjure up the fear and desperation that hung over Europe in the early days of the Cold War. Then, it seemed as though open war might well...
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On Christmas Day, 1989, Romania’s long-time Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena, were summarily executed by a firing squad after a two-hour sham trial. Thus came to an end forty-two years of Communist rule in the country. But, unlike the transfer of power in other East...
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Even if you’re a fan of espionage fiction, you may not yet be familiar with the name Paul Vidich. You should be. Vidich writes great spy novels in the grand tradition of Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, and John le Carré. His historical espionage tales rank with those of his better-known...
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Science Fiction Monday includes my latest SF book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.
Science Fiction Monday includes my latest SF book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.