Mark Greaney's 6 favorite suspenseful books about espionage

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Mark Greaney, who co-wrote Tom Clancy’s final Jack Ryan novels, is also the author of "The Gray Man" series. In his new thriller, "The Chaos Agent," someone is killing off the world's AI experts when the Gray Man also becomes a target.

'The Hunt for Red October' by Tom Clancy (1984)

The book that started the military technothriller genre. Brilliantly plotted and researched, and like nothing that came before it. Reading Clancy when I was young changed my life, and this novel embodies the 1980s Cold War zeitgeist incredibly well. Buy it here. 

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'The Charm School' by Nelson DeMille (1988)

One of the best premises of any thriller, ever. In the 1980s, a lost American tourist in Russia comes upon a Vietnam POW who claims to be an escapee from Mrs. Ivanova's Charm School, a training center for Soviet spies where the instructors are kidnapped Americans. A truly gut-wrenching and spellbinding story. Buy it here.

'The Heart of Danger' by Gerald Seymour (1995)

Gerald Seymour is criminally underrated. He has a dozen incredible novels, but this one especially captivated me. The body of a young British woman is found in a mass grave in the Balkans. Her family has no idea why she was there, and a washed-up private investigator is sent to the war-torn region to find out what happened to her. Buy it here. 

'The Devil’s Alternative' by Frederick Forsyth (1979)

I could have named a half-dozen Forsyth books — most notably The Day of the Jackal — but this lesser-known work is my favorite. A brilliant story of espionage, intrigue, and betrayal, it’s a weighty novel with terrific action and a deep look at the ethics of espionage. Buy it here. 

'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' by John le Carré (1974)

Le Carré writes anguish and the human condition better than almost anyone, and his pacing — positively glacial, at times — is so incredibly tense and powerful that the reader is utterly engaged with every page. No spy novel ever felt more real than "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." Buy it here.

'Dark Rivers of the Heart' by Dean Koontz (1994)

People think "horror" when they think of Dean Koontz. Dark Rivers of the Heart certainly has some, but it’s an espionage novel at its core. A spy with demons from his past is on the run, up against a shadowy organization that needs him dead. Koontz is fantastic, and I re-read this blood-soaked thriller every few years. Buy it here. 

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