Five of the greatest spy novels

Alan Judd is a novelist and biographer who has previously served in the British army and the Foreign Office. Chosen as one of the original twenty Best Young British Novelists, he subsequently won the Royal Society of Literature's Winifred Holtby Award, the Heinemann Award and the Guardian Fiction Award; he was also shortlisted for the Westminster Prize. His latest novel is Inside Enemy.

One of Judd's five favorite spy novels, as shared at the Telegraph:

John Buchan and Eric Ambler drew on the subject between the wars but it was Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale (1953), that caught the zeitgeist, tapping into the global yearning for glamorous adventure and creating a concept of luxury high style that has been with us ever since.

Read about another novel on Judd's list.

Casino Royale also made Maddie Crum's top ten fictional characters who just might be psychopaths, Lee Child's list of six favorite debut novels, Danny Wallace's six best books list, Mary Horlock's list of the five best psychos in fiction, John Mullan's list of ten of the best floggings in fiction, Meg Rosoff's top 10 adult books for teenagers list, and Peter Millar's critic's chart of top spy books.

--Marshal Zeringue