Five of the best espionage thrillers

Philip Kaplan had a 27-year career as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service, including being U.S. minister, deputy chief of mission and Charge d’Affaires, to the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines during the tumultuous overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos. Now retired from the State Department, Kaplan is currently a partner in Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe LLP’s Washington, D.C law office, where his practice is focused on public and private international law. He lives in Washington, DC.

Kaplan is the author of the suspenseful thriller, Night in Tehran.

At CrimeReads he tagged five "remarkable novels that pose similar choices as to how fictional characters (but in fact real people) confront challenges on missions in foreign countries and the impact these missions could have domestically and even globally." One title on the list:

Christopher’s Ghosts, by former CIA officer Charles McCarry

Christopher’s Ghosts, by former CIA officer Charles McCarry, is a two-part novel. Part One is set in a 1939 Berlin. The Christophers are a mixed American and German family being monitored by the Nazis because they are sympathetic to Jews. Paul Christopher is a sixteen-year-old who falls in love with Rima, who has Jewish grandparents. This means that under German law Rima is a Jew. Rima is tormented and killed by an SS Officer named Major Stutzer. Part Two flashes twenty years to the future, in post-war Germany. Paul has joined the CIA. One winter night, in a grey European city, he sees Major Stutzer. The chase commences with Paul following Major Stutzer into East Berlin, which was his childhood neighborhood. It is now controlled by Soviet Russia. Paul is finally faced with his old nemesis and is challenged to rise to the occasion. McCarry shows how ordinary people can become brutal secret policemen, and how dealing with them requires skill, courage, and patient determination.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue