Six books Joseph Kanon recommends

Joseph Kanon is the internationally bestselling novelist whose titles include: Los Alamos, which won the Edgar Award for best first novel; The Good German, which was made into a film starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett; The Prodigal Spy; Alibi, which earned Kanon the Hammett Award of the International Association of Crime Writers; Leaving Berlin and The Defectors. He is also a recipient of The Anne Frank Human Writers Award for his writings on the aftermath of the Holocaust.

Kanon's new novel is The Accomplice.

At The Week magazine he recommended six books, including:

Night Soldiers by Alan Furst (1988).

Readers familiar only with Furst's popular between-the-wars Paris novels will be pleasantly surprised by this lesser-known but even richer work, set in the Balkans on the brink of war and featuring a young Bulgarian who's recruited by Moscow after he witnesses his brother's murder by local fascists. Full of the author's signature smoky atmosphere and conflicted loyalties, it's early but already vintage Furst.

Read about another entry on the list.

Night Soldiers is among Dwyer Murphy's ten top spy thrillers featuring Russia versus the West.

--Marshal Zeringue