The death of espionage writer John le Carré was a blow to fans, even though literary gems like Silverview are still being found among his papers. So who will be the heir to le Carré’s legacy in the spy genre? SPYSCAPE checked out nine of the most thrilling, must-read espionage writers and possible successors.

‍

‍

Mick Herron

Fun fact: Sometimes he re-reads lines he’s written for veteran agent Jackson Lamb and thinks: “My God, did I write that? My mother reads this stuff!”

Bona fides: With Slow Horses mesmerizing audiences on Apple TV, Mick Herron's name is often bandied about as le Carré’s successor. He was educated at Oxford and published his first novel, Down Cemetery Road, about detective Zoë Boehm. In 2010, he found his niche with Slow Horses featuring MI5 agents who have been exiled from the mainstream for various offenses. He won the Crime Writers' Association 2013 Gold Dagger award.
‍

Charlotte Philby

Fun Fact: As a young woman, she read John le Carré’s books as an exercise to understand her grandfather, Kim Philby, the notorious KGB double agent.
‍
Bona Fides: The former investigative reporter for London’s The Independent newspaper wrote three of her own critically acclaimed espionage books including The Second Woman. She’s also published a biography about the Cambridge Five’s Philby in 2022 using old letters and family photos. Her parents would take her to visit Kim in Russia on family holidays after he fled to Moscow and it eventually became apparent that he was not just a doting grandad.

‍

‍

‍

Charles Cumming

Fun Fact: In 1995, Cumming was approached for recruitment by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) but said he did not go on to work for them.

Bona fides: Charles Cumming is the Scottish-born author of Box 88. His hero, Alec Milius, is a flawed loner who - when we meet him in his 20s - is instructed by MI5 to sell doctored research on oil exploration to the CIA. The Times described Cumming’s second novel, The Spanish Game, as one of the finest spy books of all time alongside Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Funeral in Berlin, and The Scarlet Pimpernel.

‍

Frank Gardner

Fun Fact: Arabian explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger inspired Gardner to learn Arabic so he worked in a brick factory and then went backpacking from Morocco to Istanbul. 

Bona Fides: Gardner trained with the British Army biathlon team and he was later an officer. The author of the spy thrillers Crisis and Ultimatum has reported for the BBC on Afghanistan and Somali. He was shot six times at close range while on assignment in Saudi Arabia in 2004, left wounded and dependent on a wheelchair. He continued working full-time as a security correspondent after the shooting while writing books. 

‍

‍

Dame Stella Rimington

Fun Fact: The KGB tried to recruit Rimington at a dinner party in the 1960s when she was a young spy.

Bona fides: London-born Dame Stella Rimington knows her Black Ops from her OpSec. The author of the Liz Carlyle series was MI5’s first female director-general in 1992 having worked in counter-subversion, counterterrorism, and led the fight against Irish Republican terrorism. She wrote her autobiography and more than half a dozen novels after retiring and shows no signs of slowing down.

‍

Robert Littell

Fun Fact: Littell joined the US Navy at age 21 and worked as a communications officer aboard a destroyer where he deciphered the ship’s coded messages. 

Bona fides: Former Newsweek Cold War journalist Robert Littell has been favorably compared to le Carré and former spy-turned-author Graham Greene. The Brooklyn-born author has focused on Russia since his first novel The Defection of A.J. Lewinter. Among his critically acclaimed works are the New York Times bestselling The Company, adapted for a mini-series, and Legends which won the Los Angeles Times Best Thriller of 2005.

‍

Simon Conway

Fun Fact: He wrote his first book at age 10 on 200 pages of foolscap and admired Ernest Hemingway, Robert Stone, and George Orwell - all of whom served in the military or in overseas work - so he decided to join up.

Bona Fides: The former British Army officer and international aid worker lives in Scotland but clears landmines and the other war debris around the world and successfully campaigned to achieve an international ban on cluster bombs. Simon Conway has written more than half a dozen books including A Loyal Spy, which won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award in 2010 for Best Thriller of the Year.

James Wolff

Fun Fact: He grew up in a Lebanese neighborhood that included an eccentric homeless man believed to be harmless - until he rolled into Beirut atop the first Israeli tank in 1982.
‍
Bona Fides: The author of How To Betray Your Country worked for the British government for more than a decade but he’s not revealing where or his real name. During Lebanon’s long civil war he was always terrified his father would be kidnapped, which came to be the subject of James Wolff’s first novel, Beside the Syrian Sea. ‍

‍

‍

Tom Bradby

Fun Fact: Tom wrote the screen adaptation of his first novel, the award-winning Shadow Dancer (2012) starring Clive Owen and Gillian Anderson.

Bona Fides: Born in Malta, Tom Bradby has an impressive list of spy books to his credit in addition to being the anchor for Britain’s ITV news. In the 90s, Bradby was ITV's Ireland correspondent and later Asia correspondent where he was seriously injured covering riots. Bradby carried out the first official interview of Prince William and Kate Middleton at the prince’s request after the couple's engagement in 2010.