Books like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

01

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

Ben Macintyre · History

Ben Macintyre tells the story of Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB officer who became the most important British spy of the Cold War.

Both dig into betrayal.

02

Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal

Ben Macintyre · History

Eddie Chapman was a safecracker, con man, and professional criminal who became Britain's most remarkable double agent during World War II.

A kindred thriller read.

03

Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory

Ben Macintyre · History

In 1943, British intelligence planted a dead man on a Spanish beach carrying fabricated documents designed to convince the Germans that the Allied invasion of southern Europe would target Greece and Sardinia rather than Sicily.

A kindred thriller read.

04

In Cold Blood

Truman Capote · Memoir

Truman Capote's account of the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas — and of the investigation, capture, trial, and execution of the killers Perry Smith and Richard Hickock — is the founding document of the true crime genre and one of the most admired works of American nonfiction of the twentieth century.

A kindred thriller read.

05

American Pastoral

Philip Roth · Literary fiction

American Pastoral opens with a narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, learning at a high school reunion about the life and death of Seymour "the Swede" Levov — a man who embodied postwar American success so completely he seemed almost allegorical.

A kindred thriller read.

06

The Cartel

Don Winslow · Thriller

The Cartel is the second installment in Don Winslow's trilogy about the Mexican drug war, picking up years after The Power of the Dog left off.

Both dig into moral compromise.

07

The Dogs of Riga

Henning Mankell · Thriller

The Dogs of Riga is the second Kurt Wallander novel, published in 1992 and set partly in Sweden but primarily in Latvia at the moment the Soviet Union is collapsing.

Both dig into moral compromise.

08

The Firm

John Grisham · Thriller

Mitch McDeere is a Harvard Law graduate who accepts a job at a small, lavishly compensating Memphis firm called Bendini, Lambert & Locke.

Both dig into moral compromise.

09

The Power of the Dog

Don Winslow · Thriller

The Power of the Dog is Don Winslow's epic of the American drug war, covering roughly three decades from the 1970s to the early 2000s and tracing the rise of the Sinaloa cartel through the lives of a DEA agent, a priest, a hitman, a cartel boss, and several other figures whose fates are bound together by money, faith, violence, and the specific kind of corruption that a war without exit produces.

Both dig into moral compromise.

10

American Prometheus

Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin · Biography

Kai Bird and Martin J.

Both dig into betrayal.

11

Devil in a Blue Dress

Walter Mosley · Mystery

Easy Rawlins is a Black World War II veteran living in Watts in 1948.

Both dig into moral compromise.

12

Rules of Civility

Amor Towles · Literary fiction

Rules of Civility opens in 1966, when Katey Kontent — now in her early forties — encounters a series of photographs at a gallery show.

Both dig into moral compromise.