If Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold showed you that espionage fiction could be literature, these 13 authors like John le Carré write spy novels that are as smart and morally complex as his best work.
John le Carré (born David Cornwell) worked for both MI5 and MI6 before publishing The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in 1963 — a novel that demolished the glamorous fantasy of James Bond and replaced it with something far more unsettling: the truth. His spy fiction depicted espionage as a morally exhausting business of betrayal, compromise, and institutional cynicism. George Smiley, his most famous creation, is the anti-Bond: quiet, cuckolded, brilliant, and deeply weary.
Le Carré published over 25 novels before his death in 2020, and his work evolved with the geopolitical landscape — from Cold War Berlin to post-9/11 rendition, from African arms deals to Russian oligarchs in London. The Constant Gardener, A Most Wanted Man, and The Night Manager all became acclaimed films or television series. What made le Carré exceptional wasn’t just his insider knowledge of intelligence services — it was his ability to write about institutions that demand loyalty while deserving none, and the human cost of serving systems that don’t serve back.
For more recommendations, explore our guides to best spy thriller books, best espionage authors, and best British authors.
Authors Like John le Carré
1. Mick Herron
Mick Herron’s Slough House series, starting with Slow Horses, is the closest thing to le Carré being written today. The series follows a group of disgraced MI5 agents banished to a dingy London office called Slough House, run by the brilliant, disgusting Jackson Lamb. The Apple TV+ adaptation with Gary Oldman has turned the series into a phenomenon.
Herron shares le Carré’s mordant view of intelligence institutions — MI5 in the Slough House books is bureaucratic, political, and willing to sacrifice its own people for institutional convenience. But Herron adds a dark comic sensibility that le Carré rarely deployed. Lamb is one of the great characters in modern fiction: repulsive, hilarious, and devastatingly competent.
“Slough House was where careers went to die. Sometimes the people attached to those careers died too.”
Mick Herron, Slow Horses
2. Charles Cumming
Charles Cumming was allegedly approached by MI6 while at university, and that experience informs his spy fiction. A Spy by Nature follows a young man recruited by British intelligence who discovers that the service demands more than he’s prepared to give. Cumming writes with le Carré’s attention to tradecraft and moral ambiguity.
Cumming shares le Carré’s focus on the personal cost of espionage. His characters are smart, dedicated people who gradually realize that the institutions they serve don’t deserve their loyalty. The Trinity Six and the Thomas Kell trilogy continue this theme. Both writers understand that the most interesting spy stories aren’t about action — they’re about trust.
“In this business, the line between loyalty and betrayal is always thinner than you think.”
Charles Cumming
3. Alan Furst
Alan Furst writes espionage fiction set in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s — the period when the modern intelligence world was being born. Night Soldiers, his first novel in this setting, follows a Bulgarian man recruited by Soviet intelligence before World War II. Furst’s novels are atmospheric, morally complex, and steeped in the specific textures of prewar European cities.
Furst shares le Carré’s literary ambitions for the spy genre. His books are as much about Paris in 1938 or Istanbul in 1940 as they are about espionage — the cities are characters, and the political atmosphere is palpable. The Foreign Correspondent, Mission to Paris, and A Hero of France are all standalone novels, so you can start anywhere. If these espionage authors inspire you to try writing your own, Grammarly can help ensure your prose is as clean as your tradecraft.
“In Europe, before the war, everything was waiting. People could feel it, though they didn’t always know what they were waiting for.”
Alan Furst
4. Graham Greene
Graham Greene is le Carré’s literary ancestor. The Quiet American, set in 1950s Vietnam, is a devastating portrait of American idealism and its destructive consequences abroad. Our Man in Havana is a darkly comic spy novel about a vacuum cleaner salesman who invents intelligence reports. Greene’s influence on le Carré was direct and acknowledged.
Greene’s “entertainments” (as he called his thrillers) share le Carré’s moral seriousness. The Third Man, The Human Factor, and The Spy all examine the human wreckage left by intelligence operations. Greene wrote from personal experience — he worked for MI6 under Kim Philby — and his cynicism about institutions was hard-earned.
“Innocence is a kind of insanity.”
Graham Greene, The Quiet American
5. Daniel Silva
Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series, starting with The Kill Artist, follows an Israeli art restorer and assassin through over 20 novels of espionage set across the Middle East and Europe. Silva writes with le Carré’s attention to geopolitical detail, and his understanding of Israeli intelligence (the Mossad) gives the series an authenticity that most spy fiction lacks.
Silva is more plot-driven than le Carré — his novels are faster-paced and more action-oriented — but he shares the moral complexity. Allon is a man who kills for his country while yearning for the peaceful life of an artist, and that tension drives the entire series. The books have been consistent bestsellers for over two decades.
“The world was a mosaic. He could see all the pieces. He just couldn’t make them fit together.”
Daniel Silva
6. Len Deighton
Len Deighton’s The IPCRESS File was published in 1962, a year before The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and together the two novels redefined spy fiction. Deighton’s unnamed narrator (called Harry Palmer in the films) is a working-class spy who shares Smiley’s intelligence but not his establishment background.
Deighton shares le Carré’s unglamorous view of espionage, but his perspective is more anti-establishment — his spy is an outsider in a world run by public school boys. The Bernard Samson trilogy of trilogies (nine novels starting with Berlin Game) is his most ambitious work, spanning decades of Cold War intelligence. Both writers created definitive fictional portraits of Cold War espionage.
“In this business, paranoia isn’t a disease. It’s a professional qualification.”
Len Deighton
7. Jason Matthews
Jason Matthews was a CIA officer for 33 years before writing Red Sparrow, a novel about a Russian intelligence officer who becomes a CIA mole. Matthews brought genuine tradecraft knowledge to his fiction — the recruitment techniques, surveillance methods, and bureaucratic infighting are drawn from real experience.
Matthews, who died in 2021, shares le Carré’s insider perspective. Both men served in intelligence and used their fiction to explore the ethical compromises the work demands. Red Sparrow was adapted into a film starring Jennifer Lawrence, and the two sequels (Palace of Treason and The Kremlin’s Candidate) complete Dominika Egorova’s story. Each novel includes authentic Russian recipes as chapter endings.
“Intelligence work is not about the truth. It is about the useful truth.”
Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow
8. Olen Steinhauer
Olen Steinhauer’s The Tourist follows a CIA “tourist” — an agent without a fixed location — who tries to come in from the cold. The Milo Weaver trilogy is the most le Carré-influenced American spy fiction of the 21st century, dealing with the same themes of institutional betrayal and personal sacrifice.
Steinhauer’s Eastern European Quintet (five standalone novels set in a fictional Eastern European country from the 1940s to the 1980s) is even more directly le Carré-adjacent — tracking how intelligence services corrupted an entire society across four decades. Both writers understand that spy fiction is really political fiction, and the best political fiction is about individuals crushed by systems.
“In this work, everyone is guilty of something. The question is what you’re willing to live with.”
Olen Steinhauer
9. Ben Macintyre
Ben Macintyre writes nonfiction espionage that reads like the best spy novels. A Spy Among Friends is about Kim Philby — the real-life MI6 officer who betrayed British intelligence to the Soviets — and specifically about his friendship with fellow spy Nicholas Elliott, who was the last to believe Philby was a traitor.
Macintyre’s books are le Carré-adjacent in the truest sense: they deal with the same world le Carré fictionalised. Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, and The Spy and the Traitor (about the real-life Oleg Gordievsky) are all compulsively readable. If you’ve finished le Carré’s fiction and want the real stories that inspired it, Macintyre is essential.
“The best spies are the ones you’d never suspect. The quiet ones. The charming ones. The ones you trust.”
Ben Macintyre
10. Tom Rob Smith
Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 trilogy, starting with Child 44, is set in Stalinist Russia, where a state security officer investigates a serial killer that the government insists doesn’t exist — because murder is a capitalist phenomenon, and there are no serial killers in the Soviet Union. The bureaucratic insanity and moral compromise echo le Carré’s treatment of Soviet institutions.
Smith shares le Carré’s interest in how totalitarian systems corrupt the people who serve them. Leo Demidov starts as a loyal MGB officer and gradually discovers that everything he believed about his country and himself was a lie. The trilogy spans from Stalin’s death to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“There is no crime in paradise. That is the law.”
Tom Rob Smith, Child 44
11. Joseph Kanon
Joseph Kanon writes espionage fiction set in the immediate post-World War II period — the birth of the Cold War. The Good German is set in occupied Berlin in 1945, where an American journalist investigates a murder while the Americans and Soviets compete to recruit German scientists. Kanon’s prose is literary, his settings are meticulously researched, and his moral ambiguity is worthy of le Carré.
Kanon shares le Carré’s belief that the spy novel can be great literature. Los Alamos, Istanbul Passage, and Leaving Berlin are all standalone novels that combine espionage with literary fiction. His books are slower and more atmospheric than most spy thrillers, rewarding readers who value character and setting over action.
“In war, the truth is always the first casualty. In peace, it’s the second.”
Joseph Kanon
12. Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming created James Bond in Casino Royale (1953), and while Bond is everything le Carré reacted against — glamorous, violent, fantastical — Fleming’s original novels are darker and more psychologically interesting than the films suggest. Bond in the books is a heavy-drinking, emotionally damaged killer who serves an empire he’s not sure deserves him.
Reading Fleming after le Carré is fascinating because you can see both the similarities and the differences. Both wrote from inside the British intelligence establishment. Both understood that espionage was essentially about trust and betrayal. But where le Carré concluded that the system was rotten, Fleming concluded that it needed heroes willing to do terrible things. Together, they defined the two poles of spy fiction.
“A medium vodka dry Martini — with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken, not stirred.”
Ian Fleming, Dr. No
13. Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal is a thriller about an assassin hired to kill Charles de Gaulle, and the French detective trying to stop him. Published in 1971, it established the procedural espionage thriller — a genre where the tension comes from meticulous detail rather than car chases. Forsyth, a former Reuters journalist and alleged MI6 asset, brought documentary realism to spy fiction.
Forsyth shares le Carré’s commitment to authenticity, though his approach is more procedural than psychological. The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, and The Dogs of War are all built on detailed research into how intelligence operations, mercenary wars, and political assassinations actually work. Both writers made spy fiction feel real by refusing to glamorise it.
“It was the planning that mattered. Without the planning, the execution was nothing.”
Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal