Right from the very title, William H. Hallahan has written a book of juxtapositions, a novel that relentlessly compares and contrasts its two main protagonists and the situations and societies in which they find themselves. Ostensibly a spy thriller, Catch Me: Kill Me follows two men who never meet, and whose interests in the case…
Brian Garfield had written over 50 books by the time Hopscotch, the 1976 Edgar winner for Best Novel, was published. Born in New York City in 1939, Garfield started writing young, and his first book came out when he was eighteen. Throughout the 1960s, he wrote mainly westerns, churning out three or four novels per…
There is no honor among thieves, they say. Perhaps it should not be surprising that when thieves are recruited into a nation’s secret service, there may be a shortage of honor among spies, also. This is what happened during World War II when the Allied powers were desperate for any means to defeat the Nazis,…
In a culture of prequels and sequels, origin stories and franchise reboots, it seems no box-office hit can be considered safe from the recycling junkies in Hollywood. Psycho, Minority Report, The Karate Kid, Fargo—all have been variously updated and rebranded for the 21st century, with wildly different results. For every Dawn of the Dead there…
Why set a thriller in 1920s Paris? This is the Paris of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, of Gertrude Stein and Nancy Cunard, of Josephine Baker in her banana skirt taking her pet leopard for a walk. This is a Paris of wild parties full of flappers and swells—surely this is not a place for spies, surely…
A team of Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon doesn’t usually conjure up images of international spies on the run from deadly assassins. But on August 3rd, the two leading ladies will dive deep into the world of espionage in The Spy Who Dumped Me. Audrey (Kunis) and Morgan (McKinnon), two thirty-year-old best friends in Los…
The Good Assassin by Paul Vidich is a suspenseful tale of Cold War espionage set in 1950s Cuba, where foreign powers compete to influence the outcome of a revolution. Former CIA Agent George Mueller arrives in Havana in August 1958—the last months before the fall of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista—to look into the activities of…
One night, after working on a murder mystery that was going nowhere, I toyed with the idea of starting an espionage thriller series. Along with tossing around possible locations and when the action would take place, I had to come up with realistic characters. Who would be the protagonist? Naturally, all the interesting people I…
The Tamarind Seed by international bestselling author Evelyn Anthony was made into a 1974 movie starring Julie Andrews, and is now finally hitting the e-shelves as an ebook. In this suspenseful thriller of Cold War espionage, UN assistant Judith Farrow becomes embroiled in an international plot when she’s just trying to take some time off…
Lead Me Into Danger by Daniella Bernett is a debut mystery featuring a journalist and jewel thief embroiled in international intrigue (available October 1, 2015). A journalist, a jewel thief, and a Russian spy…when their paths cross, it’s murder. Journalist Emmeline Kirby hasn’t laid eyes on her former lover Gregory Longdon, a jewel thief, in…
