If you’re a little pickier about your spy novels, I would perhaps suggest trying Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series (which I haven’t personally read yet but have heard good things about).

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. My husband was in line for a restaurant in Iowa when it was hot and it caused his forehead to be too hot and showed as an elevated temperature preventing him from being able to go inside. The early period, this time in Russia, is well done and adds nicely to the life and character we met in the first novel Box 88. Somehow, his cover is blown and he has his eye medication switched out with a deadly toxin that costs him his life.I had enjoyed all of Charles Cummings books prior to Box 88 but found that relatively dull and un engaging. There would be ‘collateral damage’ along the way and young Lachlan Kite would somehow have to get used to it. When Evgeny Palatnik, a Soviet defector to the West is murdered in America with Novichok, Kite sets out to avenge him.

That same president can accuse his opponent’s son of corruption while his own children enrich themselves in full view of the American people. His international bestselling thrillers including A Spy By Nature, The Spanish Game, Typhoon and The Trinity Six.

His second novel, The Hidden Man (2003), tells the story of two brothers investigating the murder of their father, a former SIS officer, at the hands of the Russian mafia. But Kite’s mission soon goes wrong and he is left stranded in a hostile city with a former KGB officer on his trail. A bunch of additional characters introduced, and not enough time to get to know - or care - about them. Here are the classic components of a clever political thriller, with spies, double agents, plot stings and revenge.