6 Global Suspense Books Full of Intrigue

Arguably the first great world-travelling thriller, John Buchan’s 1916 follow-up to his smash-hit The Thirty-Nine Steps also features Richard Hannay—army officer, big game hunter, spy, and all-around British gentleman extraordinary. 

The ripping yarn begins in the muddy trenches of war-torn France, but Hannay is soon travelling to Egypt via Lisbon, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, and Istanbul.

His mission is to head off a German-inspired Islamic uprising that threatens to turn World War One in favour of Britain’s enemies. Armed only with his fists, a revolver, a stiff upper lip, and some old-fashioned political opinions, Hannay sets about the task with patriotic relish.

An amusing antidote to the playboy world of James Bond, Matt Helm and the Man From UNCLE, is swinging sixties globe-trotting espionage agent, Emily Pollifax. 

Mrs Pollifax is a widowed grandmother living a quiet, boring life in New Jersey when she suddenly gets an idea to liven up her existence by joining the CIA. It appears unlikely, but then who would be less conspicuous on overseas trips than a retiree tourist from the suburbs? 

Writer Dorothy Gilman’s spy-sleuth - who combines Miss Marple with 007—gets her first assignment in this 1966 novel that sees the doughty pensioner pitching up everywhere from a shady bookstore in Mexico City to a grim prison in Albania. Mrs Pollifax—memorably played on the big screen by Angela Lansbury—carried on in active service until 2000. 

The second in best-selling author Evanovich’s fast-paced (and occasionally steamy) series featuring ace recovery agent Gabriella Rose. 

Rose’s handsome but annoying ex-husband Rafer Jones works for a finance company that made a tasty profit from insuring the world’s greatest artworks. However, when the artworks start disappearing, they are threatened with ruin. 

In steps the gorgeous and brilliant Gabriella, a woman who can find anything, except perhaps domestic bliss. Soon she’s jetting round the planet in search of the missing paintings. 

The job proves to be more than a simple recovery operation, however, as she uncovers vice, corruption, and a worldwide conspiracy to destroy global capital—a plot that could send Western society to the brink of ruin.

An experienced journalist and a devout Roman Catholic, Read is justly celebrated for his groundbreaking book about the Great Train Robbery. This 1991 novel sees him getting in ahead of Dan Brown with a thriller in which the death (or otherwise) of Jesus Christ is the event on which a global conspiracy hinges. 

In this case, the physical remains of a crucified man are discovered by Israeli archaeologists under the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Are these the bones of the Messiah? If they are, it would prove that Christ did not rise from the dead and thus destroy the central tenet of Christianity, creating a global crisis of faith. 

International forces with vested interests in both sides of the debate compete to prove the veracity of the find one way or the other, amongst them one of fiction’s unlikeliest international action heroes, Roman Catholic monk Andrew Nash. 

Luke Jennings’ beautifully groomed, expensively dressed, and undoubtedly psychopathic hit woman makes her first appearance in this wickedly entertaining and wittily bloody 2018 thriller. 

A Russian who lives in Paris and works for a mysterious international criminal syndicate known as The Twelve, Villanelle is notable for her quirky choice of weaponry and methods, goofy sense of humour, and partying lifestyle (though the partners she brings to her bed are likely to have an unhappy ending). 

Villanelle’s dirty work takes her to locations that are almost as glamorous as she is, because, let’s be honest, international assassins wouldn’t be seen dead in the Rust Belt.

The male counterpart of Villanelle is Nicholai Hel, the improbably handsome son of White Russian aristocrats who was inducted into the way of the Samurai by a Japanese Imperial Army general. 

Hel was created by Trevanian (pen name of author Rodney Whittaker, best known for The Eiger Sanction) and appeared in the smash international best seller Shibumi in 1979. He was brought back to fictional life—with the approval of Trevanian’s family—by great US crime writer Wilmslow in 2011. 

Satori centres on the adventures of the young Hel, an expert in the Japanese art of ‘naked fighting’ (using everyday items as lethal weapons), as he is liberated from a North Korean prison camp by the CIA and sent off on a mission that will see him criss-crossing the communist world of the 1970s, leaving a trail of dead men and swooning women in his wake.