The best spy novels of all time, according to David McCloskey

Most spy novelists have to imagine what life inside MI5 is like. David McCloskey is not one of those people. Before turning to fiction, he worked as an analyst for the CIA, with postings across the Middle East – experience he has since channelled into gripping, bestselling thrillers including Damascus Station, The Persian and The Seventh Floor. So what does someone who knows the real world of espionage make of its fictional counterpart? As he publishes his latest thriller, London Station, McCloskey picks the five spy novels that have impressed him most… Tears of Autumn by Charles McCarry “Charles McCarry is the American answer to John Le Carre – a former CIA officer who writes stories of literary and emotional consequence that just happen to feature spies. Tears of Autumn is a delightful conspiracy with this compelling proposition: what if the Kennedy assassination was a hit by the South Vietnamese – with some Cubans and mafiosi smattered about – conducted as vengeance for Washington’s role in a coup that brought down President Ngo Dinh Diem? “McCarry’s globe-trotting protagonist Paul Christopher tries to sort it all out. British readers, I believe, will not be disappointed.” Duckworth Books, £8.99 Casino Royale by Ian Fleming “How could Ian Fleming not make the list? He gives us the dashing, tuxedo-clad, martini-swilling spy in this first outing from Bond, James Bond. In Casino Royale, Bond is out to bankrupt Le Chiffre, a French trade unionist and member of Soviet intelligence. “Fleming’s novels are far more nuanced than the films, and he writes with equal panache about spies as he does about food and drink. Casino Royale is good espionage fun. It’s also a good excuse to pour a martini.”Vintage Classics, £9.99 Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews “Spy novels don’t need to get the tradecraft and the lingo right to be worthwhile, but it sure is sweet when they do. Jason Matthews, a 33-year veteran of CIA, absolutely nails the sublime tradecraft of denied area operations, centering this first novel of his trilogy on the dance between CIA case officer Nate Nash and his Russian asset, Dominika Egorova. “Therein readers will get the skinny on topics as varied and esoteric as SDRs, SRACs, and NIACT cables. Oh, and there are recipes at the end of each chapter, and the sex is wild, and sometimes features Vladimir Putin (and, fair warning, is therefore sometimes disturbing). Buckle up.” Simon & Schuster, £10.99 Agents of Innocence by David Ignatius “Featuring on an internal CIA list of ‘novels one should read to understand how this place works’, rumour has it that longtime Washington Post reporter David Ignatius got the bones of this story from the actual CIA officers involved in a similar operation in Lebanon in the 80s. “The result is a jaw-dropping novel about the recruitment of a spy deep inside the ranks of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Small wonder Ignatius’s novels ever since– his latest is about the fight for dominance in space – all say something true about the spy business.” Quercus, £10.99 The Quiet American by Graham Greene “Graham Greene was a masterful novelist and prose stylist who sometimes happened to write about spies (he called such diversions from more supposedly serious fiction ‘entertainments’). “Published in 1955, the novel explores the beginnings of the French collapse in Vietnam and, quite spookily, predicts that a greater dose of American intervention will not go so well. The CIA man is Alden Pyle, a whip-smart Harvard grad who’s got big plans to help the Vietnamese. Problem is: he doesn’t know squat about Vietnam.” Vintage Classics, £9.99 ‘London Station’ is published by Swift Press, £20