Sydney Rose Parnell series, which includes Blood on the Tracks, a Suspense Magazine Best of 2016 selection and winner of the Colorado Book Award and the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence; Dead Stop, winner of the Colorado Book Award and nominee for the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence; Ambush; and Gone to Darkness.
[The Page 69 Test: At First Light; Q&A with Barbara Nickless; The Page 69 Test: Play of Shadows]
Nickless's newest novel is The Drowning Game.
At Novel Suspects the author tagged "seven novels from cities around the globe to whet your appetite" for "historical espionage or modern-day hijinks." One title on the list:
The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. BerryRead about another entry on the list.
This debut novel exploded onto the literary world, quickly scooping up acknowledgements as diverse as Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award and aNew Yorker Best Book of the Year. The prose leaps off the page, but it’s in world-weary CIA spy Shane Collins that we find the dark heart of any honest book on spydom: spying takes a terrible toll on its practitioners. Collins has become an alcoholic burnout just as the monarchy of Bahrain (an island country in the Persian Gulf) is under attack by Iran through their proxies (sound familiar?). Berry has real-world experience of Bahrain and the CIA, and this knowledge shines through. Bonus: Learning about a Middle Eastern country you might not have heard of and seeing it vividly portrayed through the eyes of the poverty-doomed locals, the jaded expat community, and in the glittering beaches, skyscrapers, and palaces of royalty and the well-to-do.
The Peacock and the Sparrow is among Ayo Onatade's favorite crime and thriller reads of 2024, The Guardian's best crime and thrillers of 2024, and David McCloskey's top five spy novels.
Q&A with I.S. Berry.
The Page 69 Test: The Peacock and the Sparrow.
--Marshal Zeringue
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