What Are the Best Political Thrillers?

For me, “The Hunt for Red October” is among the best of the genre. The key is verisimilitude (it was, of course, published by the Naval Institute press). Set aside your image of Alec Baldwin in the film version and give the book a read.

An oldie but goodie: Failsafe. First book I ever read that made me tense and scared and that, toward the end, I literally could not put down until I finished.

Greenmantle by John Buchan, best known for The 39 Steps, is a riproaring adventure set in the middle east circa Lawrence of Arabia’s time, which is fascinating both for what it gets right (a sharp picture of the Arab world’s sociopolitical dysfunction) and wrong (the cure is, basically, a modern Saladin who went to Eton and works for the Foreign Office).

Having read espionage novels for many years, I thought Sisters by Robert Littell as excellent.

The President’s Plane Is Missing by Robert J. Serling (Rod’s brother). Written in 1967, it’s about the crisis that breaks out when Air Force One disappears off the radar while transporting the president to Palm Springs for vacation.

You have to include David Morrell when you’re talking thrillers. And you could include just about any of his titles starting with Brotherhood of the Rose.

I know Robert Ludlum was a terrible wordsmith (although he has gotten better since he died). But the first seventy pages of “The Chancellor Manuscript” on the assassination of J. Edgar Hoover are among the most exciting — and fun — pieces of junk prose ever written.

Brad Thor

John,

You forgot The Manchurian Candidate. That is one of the best movies of all time and for my money the best political thriller of all time. And I mean the original not the awful remake.

Three Days of the Condor is a good one to.

Maybe not necessarily “political thriller” but more “spy thriller”, my 10 best list has to include Ken Follett’s The Eye of the Needle and The Key to Rebecca.

1) Matt Bracken– Enemies Foreign and Domestic (first of trilogy)

2) all Vince Flynn novels (Mitch Rapp is a lot like Jack Bauer)

3) Black Cross by Greg Iles (and SPandau Phoenix as well)

4) all Brad Thor novels

5) Patriots by Rawles

“The Secret Agent” by Joseph Conrad. The original and still the greatest.
Forsythe’s “the Odessa File” is underrated, maybe because the movie was not as good as the boook.

I omitted Tinker Tailor from the list as this was to be about American thrillers. As espionage novels go, there is none better.

I second the comment about Ross Thomas. I think he’s the most interesting thriller writer to have written in a long time, and he is certainly the most cynical. He’s the first writer to make me doubt my own government. The three Artie Wu novels beginning with “Chinaman’s Chance” and featuring such characters as Otherguy Overby and Boy Howdy are priceless. “The Fools in Town are On Our Side” and others are just great. He also wrote under the name Oliver Bleek.

Richard Condon is another one with “The Manchurian Candidate” and others.
All the novels of Alan Furst are brilliant. He’s on a par with Le Carre without the moral blindness toward our enemies. Start with “Night Soldiers”.
Gerald Seymour from GB is a consistently fine writer of these kinds of books. His books have topical plots but are character-driven and the characters are finely crafted all too human folks.”Field of Blood” about the Irish ‘troubles’ is a good place to start. I can’t reccomend him enough.

Double ditto on Shelley’s Heart. In fact everything McCarry has written should be mandatory reading (though I, of course, believe in freedom and you may, if you wish, deprive yourself). McCarry’s Old Boys is absolutely wonderful. Several of McCarry’s earlier characters–now old men on retired from the world of espionage–make a comeback to take it upon themselves to thwart and Islamist plot. it’s wonderful.

Also, Drury’s Advise and Consent ranks up there. And, even though this is supposed to an American list, I can’t help but point to Le Carre’s early work–his last four have been anti-business, anti-American rants (but, boy, can he write a great sentence). And George Smiley is one of literature’s great characters (after the British series, he has become Sir Alec Guinness).

As to Follett, the Eye of the Needle was excellent, but my favorite is the Key to Rebecca, which is a great example a good writer’s ability to sustain tension throughout a book (sorry, he’s another Brit).

Also wanted to note that the James Grady book “Six Days of the Condor” is significantly different than the movie, along with the title “Three Days . . .”

Can’t leave out Allen Drury, really. I tried to reread Advise and Consent a year ago or so, and found the prose a bit tough, but I well remember reading the book in high school, and how it helped form the way I think. Agree with Charles McCarry, and would also add Ross Thomas. The best thing about this is the new authors I’ll now be able to order from Amazon.

Will get to my list later, Day of the Jackal and Shelley’s Heart are the unarguable positions on this list.

Fail Safe is left-wing agitprop. The number one position on any “false dichotomy” thriller list.

Already mentioned, but I second the classic early-60s trio:
1) Seven Days In May
2) FailSafe
3) Manchurian Candidate

To make it a quartet, I also agree with Advise and Consent.

Maybe not primarily political, but the political overtones in 1959′s Alas, Babylon made for some tense reading, especially at the age of sixteen when living in the actual setting of that novel. (it just turned fifty years old last week, btw.)

Seven Days… remains my favorite. Beyond the story and the execution of the plot (book and movie), it showed how rampant the prevailing left-ish attitudes were in the early sixties such that it was obvious that any coup would only be from right-wingers. It also showed what enemy territory it must have been for the likes of Buckley or Goldwater or Reagan.

Plus, Ava Gardner.

Hit sumbit too soon. Manchurian Candidate is the grand-daddy.

Neal Stephenson and his uncle (under the name ‘Stephen Bury’)'s “Interface” is another one I’d recommend.

Also in the sci-fi Political Thriller subgenre, further into the sci-fi territory, is Bruce Stirling’s “Distraction”.

Am I the first to mention Stephen Hunter and his Bob the Nailer books? Point of Impact is a classic.

read Brad Thor’s Lions of Lucerne and have resisted reading anything else. Did not like the way he writes dialog. It just didn’t seem natural. Among other things his characters curse too freely and over the top. Vince Flynn writes dialog much more naturally.

1.Atlas Shrugged – while not really a thriller, it is definetely political, offering what has to be the strongest criticism of socialism in America (it looks a lot like today’s America). A classic.

2.State of Fear. Crichton does a great job piercing the Global Warming myth and the politics of fear which are exploiting it. It is an even better read now that the climatgate thing is going on.

3.Vincent Flynn novels – I am currently reading Extreme Measures, and haven’t read his latest one, so I won’t decide yet which is the best one.

4.Fatherland was terrific, I agree.

5.1984 – Another classic of what life would be like in a communist “utopia.”

And, coming soon, in spring of next year, 2076: Reagan’s Last Word. The premise: Reagan wrote a letter in 1976 (he talked about it at the RNC convention), which was placed in a time capsule to be opened in 2076. But, will Reagan’s message of freedom be welcome in an America that has been fundamentally changed? Will our kids and grandkids be allowed to hear the message of the letter?

It looks like the genre is broadening so I will add a couple that may be older than the present commenters. One is Ice Station Zebra which has a plot device that adds to the suspense. Alistair MacLean is worth working your way through his list although most of them are military except Ice Station. Another, which is in English if not American, is Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini, which is the best description of the French Revolution in fiction. Maybe Tale of Two Cities is better but harder to read. It is not exactly a thriller in the pattern of Day of the Jackal, but is an adventure about a political event.

I was remiss in not mentioning the works of Alex Berenson, whose books The Faithful Spy, The Ghost War, and The Silent Man rank with Daniel Silva’s as among the best fictional depictions of the war with radical Islam. His protagonist, CIA agent John Wells is depicted realistically and, refreshingly, not like a superhero.

If you’re inclined to get more fantastic, I would reccomend the Ghost trilogy by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. (Of Tangible Ghosts, The Ghost of the Revelator, and Ghost of the White Nights). The basic premise of each book, a former spy who gets unwillingly pulled back into the game, is a well-worn one, but made new here by setting it on an Earth where paranormal phenomena are an established reality and the game revolves around the efforts of various nations to develop technologies to exploit these phenomena and the behind the scenes struggle in Columbia (the alternate U.S.) between the president and the Speaker of the House (who has a sort of prime ministerial position). There’s also a good deal of intrigue revolving around energy politics (the second book involves the protagonist being sent to the Mormon theocracy of Deseret to obtain their synthetic fuels technology).

Alan Furst, especially Night Soldiers, but all his books are quite readable. I think the corner voted the first line of this book the best-ever start to a novel.

I’m surprised that it took until #49 to get to Alistair MacLean. I agree with #54 that his early books are his best: Guns of Navarone is outstanding for suspense (the movie was done pretty well, too, unusually enough), as are HMS Ulysses, and South By Java Head. Also in the WWII era is Helen MacInnes, although the titles of any of her books escape me at this moment. Second on Silva, and I have just this year discovered Berenson, who is really good. As is Ferrigno, with his assassin series.

“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” by John LeCarre – also by far the best film adaptation.

the underworld trilogy from james ellroy

Let me second (third, actually) the praise for Stephen Hunter. I nominate Hunter’s novels The Master Sniper, Tapestry of Spies and The Second Saladin; from the unjustly neglected British suspense novelist Michael Gilbert, The Queen Against Karl Mullen; and from Stuart Woods, most of whose books don’t interest me, his excellent debut, Chiefs.

Nelson DeMille needs more mention on this list.

The Rivers of Babylon, The Talbot Odyssey, Word of Honor, The Lion’s Game, Night Fall, and Wild Fire.

All great political thrillers.

Vince Flynn is my favorite, followed by Brad Thor. The reality is that men that writers like Brad Thor describes do use salty language.

A bunny trail: Fans of Frederick Forsyth need to read “The Shepherd,” which is my all-time favorite Forsyth. Every Christmas season, I hope to see it turned into a movie—alas, it never is—so I cast it myself and play it in my head. This year I’m using Ioan Gruffudd for my lost pilot.

As Conspiracy movies go two that should not be missed :

The Parallax View

Capricorn One

Superb cinema & full of great twists.