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| Spies, spies, everywhere |
2027 12 + 4 Reading Challenge - Spy / Thriller
"Near Washington, D.C., there are two clandestine the world's most unusual laboratory and a secret CIA training camp. Drawn to these sites by a murder, ex-Secret Service agent Sean King encounters a dark world of mathematicians, codes, and spies. His search for answers soon leads him to more shocking violence-and an autistic girl with an extraordinary genius.
Now, only by working with his partner, Michelle Maxwell, who is battling her own personal demons, can he catch a killer ... and stop a national threat."
2. David Downing - Stettin Station (John Russell #3 / 2009). The first two books were excellent.
"In the fall of 1941, Anglo-American journalist John Russell is still living in Berlin, tied to the increasingly alien city by his love for two Berliners: his fourteen-year-old son, Paul, and his longtime girlfriend, Effi. Forced to work for both German and American Intelligence, he's searching for a way out of Germany. Can he escape and take Effi with him?"
"Berlin, 1948. Almost four years after the war’s end, the city is still in ruins, a physical wasteland and a political symbol about to rupture. In the West, a defiant, blockaded city is barely surviving on airlifted supplies; in the East, the heady early days of political reconstruction are being undermined by the murky compromises of the Cold War. Espionage, like the black market, is a fact of life. Even culture has become a battleground, with German intellectuals being lured back from exile to add credibility to the competing sectors.
Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer, fled the Nazis for America before the war. But the politics of his youth have now put him in the cross-hairs of the McCarthy witch-hunts. Faced with deportation and the loss of his family, he makes a desperate bargain with the fledgling CIA: he will earn his way back to America by acting as their agent in his native Berlin. But almost from the start things go fatally wrong. A kidnapping misfires, an East German agent is killed, and Alex finds himself a wanted man. Worse, he discovers his real assignment — to spy on the woman he left behind, the only woman he has ever loved. Changing sides in Berlin is as easy as crossing a sector border. But where do we draw the lines of our moral boundaries? At betrayal? Survival? Murder?"
"Spring 1915: World War One rages across Europe, and the British Empire is assailed on all fronts—domestic and abroad. Amidst this bloodbath of nations, where one man’s flag is another man’s shroud, a British spy is asked to do the impossible: seduce and betray the woman he loves, again. Only this time betrayal is a two-way street.
Jack McColl, a spy for His Majesty’s Secret Service, is stationed in India, charged with defending the Empire against Bengali terrorists and their German allies. Belgium, he finds, is not the only country seeking to expel an invader.
In England, meanwhile, suffragette journalist Caitlin Hanley begins the business of rebuilding her life after the execution of her brother—an IRA sympathizer whose terrorist plot was foiled by Caitlin’s own ex-lover, the very same Jack McColl. The war is changing everything and giving fresh impulse to those causes—feminism, socialism and Irish independence—which she as a journalist has long supported.
The threat of a Rising in Dublin alarms McColl’s bosses as much as it dazzles Caitlin. If another Irish plot brings them back together, will it be as enemies or lovers?"
It says only that this is Charles Hood's fourth assignment. I've read two others thus far.
"An intrigue against Britain by Bolshevik agents is strongly suspected at MI6. Sir Leonard Wallace sends Captain Hugh Shannon, disguised as a professor of English Literature, to India to get to the bottom of it."
"A 1960s London PI’s search for a missing au pair leads to sinister evil in this classic spy series opener by the author of The Rainbird Pattern . Meet Rex Carver, the suave and laconic private investigator. His job is to track down a German au pair , Katerina Saxmann, who has gone missing in Brighton. But when the security services show up at his apartment within hours of him accepting the assignment, he realizes there is far more going on. As the search leads Carver around the pleasure spots of Europe, the investigation, and his feelings for Katerina, get more complicated. But when a specter from the continent’s past rears its head, Rex discovers he might be in too deep "
"Colin Grant, New York art expert, suddenly finds himself on a secret mission for a mysterious millionaire--to acquire a famous painting being smuggled out of Hungary. What he does not know is that he is about to become the key piece in a sinister puzzle--a conspiracy to unleash a war of bloody international terrorism. From inside front Grant glanced sideways and saw a woman, beautiful enough to change his glance into a stare. Something stirred in a deep memory, couldn't come to the surface. Amber earrings emphasized the strange color of her eyes, almost a golden brown. Her lips smiled. Softly she said as she turned back to admire the painting, "You don't remember me, Mr. Grant?" Grant looked at her, puzzled. "I must talk to you," she said urgently. "It is too important for a telephone--it's about a job a friend of mine thinks you could carry out for him. Could you meet me at my hotel tonight? We can have supper in my room." Colin Grant did not know until it was too late that his whole life began to change in that moment--and that he would be lucky even to stay alive for the next few weeks."
"For British spymaster, Colonel Russell, the Cold War is about to get hotter.
When plans for a new and highly-innovative form of nuclear energy are stolen it falls to Russell’s Security Executive to retrieve them before the secrets of Slow Burner are leaked to Britain’s enemies.
But as Russell discovers, the enemy within can be more dangerous than any foreign adversary."
"At the height of the Cold War, Chief Inspector Troy of Scotland Yard, assigned to both protect and spy on Khrushchev, infiltrates the M16 to investigate the brutal killing of a Royal Navy diver and begins to suspect that one of his own colleagues may be responsible."
"This sophisticated narrative of spy/counterspy is set in Washington, where the Russians have planted an "agent in place." For nine years he has worked himself quietly into the fabric of government and society. Dedicated and patient, he has everyone's respect. It is a plot where amateurs are the villains and professionals are the heroes -- particularly a team of British and French agents whose job is to foil further Russian intervention. The story moves from Washington to New York to Menton on the French Riviera, where it concludes in a series of stunning revelations, dismaying setbacks and breathless discoveries."
"Baron is sent to Africa where he joins from Egypt to Kenya in search of a Chinese scientist with a plan to develop a horrific germ capable of killing thousands. He also has a unique gift at brainwashing, making everyone Baron comes into contact with a potential adversary."
Alternates
"John Angstrom is a decommissioned CIA field operative, damaged goods from a mission gone awry. He is "placed" into DARPA, a branch of the Pentagon charged with maintaining the technological superiority of the U.S. military. It's a landing spot for Angstrom—a career transition—someplace safe for a man who can no longer do what he loves, and what he is trained to do.
His placement coincides with a groundbreaking event in DARPA's history: the crowdsourced design of a next generation Marine Amphibious Vehicle, or MAV. Massive in scale, the effort pulls together top experts in the field and submissions from the largest defense contractors around the world. The placement also pairs Angstrom with Dr. Susan Rand, a beautiful and driven woman working as a consultant on the project. Rand is a force like no other, and Angstrom must quickly figure out her motives, because her agenda is not clear, and she wields power and influence within DARPA in a most unorthodox manner.
Among all of the MAV submissions, there is something significant—something that no one can see for what it truly is—at least, not until Angstrom discovers it. His new role takes him in an unexpected"
"Dr Love's fourth supersonic adventure. Dr Jason Love is going to attend a medical conference in Damascus and one of his patients asks him to find out how his daughter died in a car accident on the outskirts of Syria's capital. But all is not as it seems. Fulfilling a simple favour turns into a nightmare for the Somerset doctor, turned part-time secret agent..."
"They keep teasing you with it... Hollister tells you a little, mostly about how it began with the woman, and then Hollister dies because of it... he FBI tells you a little more, again about the woman, and then they also stop talking...
So you go to the woman. And she is beautiful. Too beautiful.
Because after a little while you forget that she may very well be the instrument of your death..."
"Anna Peters, the unorthodox New World Oil Company researcher, learns the price of the good research job she obtained after her successful adventures in The Big Payoff. The Chairman of the Board wants her to do a little track down Crystal Blythe, a feckless young woman soon to inherit the lion's share of New World stock. Crystal and her twin brother Edward have been living in France, and Anna is dispatched on a working holiday to locate the missing girl. Paris, art, culture, great food-the trip sounds terrific. Unfortunately for Anna and her artist lover Harry Radford, the young Blythes have gotten themselves into bad company, including gun runners and espionage agents from two countries. Anna learns she can't trust the charming and talented Blythes, and wonders if they can even trust each other."
Quite a variety in the genre. Maybe you'll see some authors with whom you're unfamiliar.
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