Character driven spy/mystery novels

by Julian D. Parrott
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5 books
I tend to gravitate to thrillers - primarily spy/espionage but occasionally crime/mystery. What links my preferences, though, is that the main protagonist is either an amateur who finds themselves being pulled into extraordinary circumstances or that the protagonist is a world-weary professional. There is also a sense that the novels below are all literate; they are extraordinarily well written as well as bering good and easy reads. My own novels, Fit for Purpose and Of Love and Honour, follow such a pattern as my protagonists are 40-something  amateurs who find themselves being pulled into international intrigue.
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Enigma

Roman
Robert Harris, 2013
Harris is a master at weaving classic, suspenseful intrigue. I often gravitate to plots with a historical bent and Harris excels in this genre. “Enigma” is such an example, a murder needs to be solved set against the backdrop of Bletchley Park in the dark days of World War two and the struggles to crack German codes. Incidentally, his “Fatherland” is perhaps the best speculative fiction imagining a world where the Nazis weren’t defeated in 1945.  Enigma has a great sense of verisimilitude, captivating, authentic characters, a murder plot that eventually exposes a more complicated plot involving honour, loyalty, and geopolitics, oh, and there is romance as well.

The Heart of the Matter

Graham Greene, 2018
Greene always creates incredible multifaceted and complex characters who are often confronted with difficult choices. Some choose the honorable path but his plots and characters are so well crafted that those that make dishonorable choices remain somewhat understandable and sympathetic. The Heart of the Matter presents such a main character and such choices. Set in a British West African colony during World War Two - based a little on Greene’s own experience as an Mi6 agent in Sierra Leone- the heat and humidity drips off the page. The protagonist, a rather colorless colonial policeman, is an honest and decent man who, when confronted with a chance of a passionate affair, implodes, destroying everything he has stood for and lived for until he makes a tragic choice that he feels will, to some extent, redeem him.

Snow

John Banville, 2024
A big Irish country house, a squabbling family, a priest, a murder, and a gifted detective from the Anglo-Irish ascendency.  The murder in a country house is a very familiar trope, but Snow is not an Agatha Christie whodunnit at all. Banville ’s characters are all hiding deep and dark secrets that stand in contrast to the purity of the snowstorm  - a snowstorm that adds to the sense of a closed and claustrophobic damaged community. Banville presents a certain milieu of a 1950s  staunchly Catholic Ireland with wonderful, evocative detail and an insightful and critical eye. Snow is wonderfully and artfully crafted.

Down Cemetery Road

Mick Herron, 2009
I'm a huge fan of Mike Herron's books that are now receiving international acclaim partly due to the Apple TV spy-series, Slow Horses. His earlier series of crime novels (the Oxford Series) start with Down Cemetery Road, and readers of the Slough House series will find all of Herron’s literate skills evident here. He writes with a disguised ease that belies how thoughtful and well-crafted a writer he is. There is cynicism here and humor, too, smart and sharp dialogue, engaging characters, involved plotting, and a fair amount of suspense.  Down Cemetery Road introduces us to Zoe Boehm in a minor role but a wonderful character nonetheless. She becomes the main protagonist the other three novels in the Oxford series - and now the focus of a new Apple-TV series

The Lifeline

Phyllis Bottome, 2024
I'm a huge Ian Fleming and James Bond fan. I have forswore choosing a Fleming novel but have turned to a novel by someone who had a significant influence on Fleming. Bottome and her husband taught Fleming at the rather unusual “finishing school” they ran in Austria in the late 1920s.  The Lifeline is a World War Two era spy novel  that begins soon after the  Anschluss. The novel is set in the Austrian Alps with an ostensibly amateur spy who, it has been speculated, is based on Fleming himself. Bottome’s interest in psychology is clearly evident in how she represents the impact the Nazis have on everyday Austrians and the psychological impact on the spy who is deep undercover - pretending to be a patient in a mental hospital.  The novel isn’t a classic espionage tale as it focuses more on human connections, and, at times, it does feel a little dated and sluggish, but it is an interesting read.