(no subject)

[stillsostrange]

Not unrelated to my previous post, can I get recommendations for good spy novels or thrillers? My preferences are for non-America-centric, and with female characters that won't make me want to set the book on fire.

Comments

[miladygrey.livejournal.com]

Kelley Armstrong's Exit Strategy and Made To Be Broken, which take place in Canada, and Mark Burnell's The Rhythm Section and Chameleon, which are British. I adore Armstrong's Nadia, and I only eyerolled at Burnell's Stephanie once or twice.

[http://users.livejournal.com/jane_drew_/]

I definitely second the Armstrong books! Are you wanting specifically non-paranormal sorts of stories, or are spy/thriller stories with paranormal elements also okay?

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

It's Cold-War era, but I reread Martin Cruz Smith's Polar Star not so long ago and was struck by how phenomenally well it holds up.

[andrian6.livejournal.com]

Greg Rucka's "Queen & Country" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_%26_Country) books - both in comic and novel form. Set in the UK and a spiritual successor to The Sandbaggers

And anything by Stella Rimington (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Rimington). She is a former head of MI5.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

Anthony Price's thrillers are very good, although you may have to order them used. He specializes in unheroic characters who end up surprising themselves -- and cool plot twists. They're British, but most of his characters are male, and many are set circa WW2 or the Cold War.

Mary Stewart's thrillers from the 60s are still remarkably rereadable.

Dorothy Dunnett's Johnson Johnson books are wonderful thrillers and each is narrated by a female character. Each book has three different names depending on which edition you get, so check carefully that you haven't already read the book. My faves are Dolly and the Singing Bird aka The Photogenic Soprano aka Rum Affair, and Dolly and the Doctor Bird aka Match for a Murderer aka Operation Nassau. (Book list at http://www.dorothydunnett.co.uk/dubibliojj.htm ) However, you have to like her style and her love of fooling the reader: it's a love or hate relationship IMHO.

Other than Stella Rimington, I'm having problems thinking of modern thrillers which I liked and that fit your requirements.

[clarentine]

Other than Stella Rimington, I'm having problems thinking of modern thrillers which I liked and that fit your requirements.

Likewise, and I wonder if the issue isn't that what we (I) understand when we say "spy novels" isn't really a Western European artefact? What we (I, again) might mean by that term might be called, or understood as, something entirely different in a non-Western culture. (I wonder what, for instance, someone from Thailand, or Nairobi, or Beijing would think of a person who was set up to spy by a rival political entity? I don't know that story of such a person/situation would have the same sort of place in their culture that Western spy novels have in ours.) Even aside from the consideration of authentic female characters.

If you're willing to take a recommendation for second world spy novels that do meet your criteria otherwise, I can suggest R.A. MacAvoy's Lens of the World trilogy (Lens of the World and King of the Dead especially; the third, In the Belly of the Wolf, was a little opaque for me).

[between4walls.livejournal.com]

If you're okay with a 1911 publication date, Under Western Eyes is my favorite spy novel ever. It's Russia-centric with about half the book set in a Russian immigrant enclave in Switzerland. Whether or not the female characters work is a matter of opinion, they're significantly better than Conrad's usual though and the character of Sophia Antonovna in particular is v. well done. There's a structural weirdness in that it started out as a short story and got expanded into a novel, so the first half has a thriller-ish plot and structure while the second half is espionage-oriented.