Hacker News Reader

Comment by nocoiner | Hacker News Reader

Anyone have any recommendations for other classic spy novels like le Carre’s? I’ve read some Greene and Deighton, which were both mentioned in the article, so I suppose I should revisit those, but would be interested in any other works with a similar scene and setting.

One of my favorite le Carre tidbits - apparently in the UK and US versions of “Tinker, Tailor,” a character in one version takes a ferry in Hong Kong, but takes a tunnel in another version.

Apparently after the original UK release, one of the readers asked le Carre why the character didn’t just take the (relatively recently opened) tunnel between Kowloon and the mainland, le Carre went white in the face and promptly rewrote that part in the forthcoming US version for its subsequent release and had the character take the tunnel instead (as anyone would have done in those circumstances, given the two options).

Terrific writer and storyteller. Must have had a hell of a life.

View on HN

I like all of his George Smiley novels. But perhaps the most haunting for me is The Looking Glass War (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Looking_Glass_War). I had just urned 50 when I read it and was actually surrounded by a lot of people ranging 60-80.

While a spy novel, it’s almost more of dark comic tragedy on the power of nostalgia. I easily find the storyline transferrable to some of the “established” organizations I’ve done work for.

Aging is hard. I wish there were Ben more books and stories like this one.

Agree, it is very much a dark tragi-comedy.

I thought it was common knowledge that John le Carré's "The looking-glass war" (I agree with your recommendation of it) was inspired by the story of Lionel Crabb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Crabb) but neither Wikipedia page seems to refer to the other.

> Aging is hard.

A story I read as a kid, The Positronic Man, by Asimov, really revealed this to me. Because the protagonist lives a long time, it covers a few different human characters, and his final words in the book really hit home.

Most Alan Furst novels are good. They are largely the same, but the despite being cookie cutter, the cookie is pretty tasty.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/49941.Alan_Furst

Yeah, I like them but he does seem to write about occupied Paris a bit too often. When he focuses on places less covered in WWII fiction like Bulgaria, Romania, or Greece, it is a bit more interesting.

> Anyone have any recommendations for other classic spy novels like le Carre’s?

Probably not comparable, but Frederick Forsyth's novels are great. He wrote The Day of the Jackal, The Fourth Protocol, etc. If you want a taste for his books, I would suggest The Devil's Alternative.

Very perceptive recommendation - I love Forsyth’s novels. I feel like they’re a little bit of a guilty pleasure, but damn, that guy can write a thriller.

I always recommend The Dogs of War as a first Forsyth novel, and No Comebacks as a first Forsyth reader.

No Comebacks:

1. Are all short stories, so good for the reader who is not yet invested in Forsyth

2. Starts with the titular story, which (IMO) is a pretty good capture of Forsyth plot and story-telling.

I find it hilarious how Dogs of War is different as the book and the movie. The movie is a classical '80s thing with big guns and explosions. The book on the other hand gets into great detail about the logistics of organizing a coup, holding accounts, export licenses for arms, etc. Forsyth would've probably preferred to write it as a non-fiction book, but making it a work of fiction vastly extended his life expectancy.

Robert Ludlum had many that were great. The original Bourne Identity got my family hooked. Beware the post death authorized books

David Morrel also had some good ones. Brotherhood of the Rose was great.

Parsifal Mosaic was one of my favorite Ludlum books outside the obvious Bourne books (which actually got a little tired after the 3rd or 4th when he was “returning” as the mentor)

Robert Ludlum's "The Prometheus Deception" has so many plot twists...my favorite of his.

Also Le Carre's "The Russia House" is my favorite, and has such great prose. More of a love story maybe, but the subtexts are really a thing of beauty in that work.

I was an avid Ludlum reader in my youth and recently revisited them. I was blown away by the cultural shift since then. His protagonists spends half the books arranging to use payphones and rent cars in an anonymous way. I can't tell if the job has got easier or harder since those largely stopped being possible.

Or the dozen hand signatures required at the Swiss banks to unlock vast resources…

Same with Tom Clancy's. He wrote some pretty genius books with original stories and then it turned into a bunch of series that were nothing than drivel by other authors, like "op center".

Even now they stamp his name on games and series he had nothing to do with. I wish that would be illegal, writing a book under the name of someone who had nothing to do with it.

Ps the second Bourne book was soooo much better than the movie and so completely different. From the major events with characters (not wanting to spoil) to the setting in Hong Kong.

Tom Clancy was my favorite author, I think authors sign contracts that let some entity use their name and it turns into a brand. The Jack Ryan books after he passed or had other writers weren’t that good. How far can you go after the main character becomes President? I did stumble onto one of those authors, Mark Greaney, who wrote The Gray Man series of novels (the netflix movie is not a good representation at all). Spy/action thrillers, main character is CIA “ground branch” type, not a chess match kind of spy.

Yeah they should stop that "branding" rights thing IMO.

The books after he died were pure drivel. Like they were secreted by the authors from some kind of gooey gland in their brain. All kinda the same, like that op center and rainbow six stuff.

The reason I read a few of them was that I didn't realise they were not written by him at the time and I thought they'd get better. But they didn't of course, they only got worse.

I thought and continue to think early Clancy is excellent — basically everything that became a movie with Harrison Ford or Alec Baldwin, plus “Red Storm Rising” — but even before he brought in the ghost authors, his reactionary politics started to get in the way of the stories. Yeah yeah, I can stand a feckless Democratic pol who just cares about getting elected as a dramatic fool/foil, but as I recall his last solo works went way beyond that and just got kind of tediously offensive for anyone who didn’t share his particular politics (even accounting for the typical politics of the average writer of military fiction).

It was actually kind of a surprising turn, because Tom Clancy on TV on the day of 9/11 was one of the most level-headed commentators about the vast majority of Muslims (i.e., not terrorists). And there’s a video of him presenting at the NSA in the mid ‘80s that shows him to be a very bright, very funny, very personable guy. Got the sense that in his later years, American politics just started to make him angry, and in my view it adversely affected his work.

But at his peak, he was damn fine at his craft.

Yeah I thought Cardinal of the Kremlin was a decent book too. Had a bit of a spy who came in from the dark feel to it.

But yeah his politics oozing through everything in later books (even written by him) also put me off.

Graham Greene's The Quiet American has a similar feel. About an American spy in Vietnam.

Edit: Also, Mick Heron's Slow Horses series, based on a group of outcaste MI5 spies in London. (The first book was made into a TV series on Apple TV).

> (The first book was made into a TV series on Apple TV).

There have now been 2 seasons of Slow Horses (apple TV series) and more are planned.

I haven't read the books, but this is a good series.

It's not a spy novel by any stretch but if you enjoyed TSWCIFTC you'll like For whom the bell tolls. The character portrayals are similarly ambiguous (among many other reasons to read that book)

The Soul of Viktor Tronko by David Quammen (1987) - from the heart of the Cold War. American interrogators try to figure out if a Soviet defector with startling revelations is telling the truth.

Quammen has become well known as a writer on nature and the environment, but he started his career writing spy novels.

His earlier novel The Zolta Configuration (1983) is set in the atom bomb project during WWII. I recall Oppenheimer and his circle are characters.

Great suggestions! I read those after I read a spectacular book by Quammen about either pandemics, or the pandemic. I think it must have been more general, but I read it during the pandemic, so it blends together. (If you don’t know the book I’m referring to, I highly recommend it - look up quammen and pandemic, and it’ll be at the top of the list. Part of the book I remember best is where it tells a fascinating factionalized story of how HIV may have moved out of Africa.)

I don’t think I finished reading Zolta, though. I should pick that back up.

Robert Littell’s spy novels up through Vicious Circle are wonderful. He wrote The Company, which has been adapted for the screen.

There may be more than one show called "The Company"; I'm not sure. I watched one episode of a show of that name, and really liked it. I think it was in two episodes, and I missed the second. Ever since, I've been waiting for it to be repeated.

Kim Philby's "My Silent War" is a good read.

Sometimes autobiography, sometimes fiction.

(the guy literally had a hell of a life)

https://books.google.de/books/about/My_Silent_War.html?id=du...

Charles Mccary is kind of an American John le Carre. The Tears of Autumn is especially good

You must mean the book? I didn’t recall this scene from the miniseries.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com