Paul Vidich, An Honorable ManRead about the other entries on the list.
An Honorable Man is one of the more impressive espionage debuts in some time, a book that earns its place in the Le Carré tradition. George Mueller, a Yale man and a seasoned case officer, performs the Smiley-esque spy work of rooting out a Soviet mole. Vidich sets his story in the McCarthy era, a snarl of backstabbing, suspicion, and secrets. This DC is, in short, “a terrible place for honorable men to work.” The book’s primary conceit is cynical in the finest tradition of continental spy literature: both countries, both systems are irredeemably corrupt, and the spies working in their service are only playing a sisyphean game, occasionally to the death. But even in that Cold War morass, Vidich manages moments of vivid humanity, not to mention a brooding DC atmosphere to rival any of the city’s crime fiction or noir.
--Marshal Zeringue