favourite female spy novelists
- John Fullerton
- Mar 14
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 14
Why is it that so many people seem to assume spy novelists are men? That includes agents and publishers.
The truth is that female spy writers are every bit as good, if not better. It’s just that they don’t seem to attract the same level of publicity or exposure for some reason.
The book industry has some catching up to do. After all, women are taking charge of national intelligence and security bodies all over the real world.
For decades, the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service employed women only as secretaries, even though the secretaries in many cases were better at espionage, running a Station and supervising operations than their lazy, inebriated or incompetent male bosses. Eventually, they were allowed to rise to the level of assistant. Only reluctantly, and far too late, were a handful promoted to the rank of intelligence officer and went on to excel themselves.
The accomplished novelist Manda Scott, who is probably best known for her historical fiction, was apparently told by her publisher at one point to change her name because no-one would buy her spy novel in Tesco’s with a woman’s name on the cover.
That’s hopefully no longer the case, but it’s a sad fact that men even today prefer to read books by other men, and only in their favourite genre. Few dare try the work of women authors, fewer still are adventurous enough to test out different genres.
I’m sorry to admit to being one of them! C.S. Forester, Alistair MacLean and Len Deighton are still my favourites. (I couldn’t even finish my first Sally Rooney novel. But then I do love the Elena Ferrante books…)
Face it, we males are creatures of timid habit, maybe because we don’t like our assumptions challenged.
By contrast, women not only read many more books than we do, but they read far more widely. They’ll boldly take on books across all genders and genres. They’re more open to new things, including fiction. They’re more courageous, in short.
So here’s my list:
Alma Katsu
Winner of numerous awards, Katsu has written two spy novels, Red Widow and Red London, something her website bio describes as ‘the logical marriage of her love of storytelling with her 30+ year career in intelligence’.
I have to say Red Widow blew me away, and not just because it was stylishly written. She demonstrates how to build unbearable tension with an unpredictable and surprising plot in the confines of an office. That’s right. Under the airconditioner, next to the water cooler. No need to scramble around the world, guns blazing.
Her website: almakatsubooks.com
Elizabeth Bowen
An Anglo-Irish author whose classic novel, The Heat of the Day, is set during the London blitz. It’s still in print. The Los Angeles Times sums it up: ‘Probably the most intelligent noir ever written...The situation is surreal, the psychologizing profound, and the eerie inwardness trapped in Bowen's distinctive prose resonates inside a peculiar silence that fills the reader's heart with dread.’
It can be found here:
Manda Scott
Scott’s Treachery of Spies won the McIvanney award for the Best Scottish Crime Novel. An elderly woman of striking beauty is found murdered in Orleans, France. Her identity has been cleverly erased but the method of her death is very specific: she has been killed in the manner of traitors to the Resistance in World War Two.
The author’s website: https://mandascott.co.uk/
Kate Atkinson
Atkinson, winner of the Costa Book of the Year Award, has written three World War Two novels, including Transcription. In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring British Fascist sympathisers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. Ten years later, now a producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat.
Atkinson’s website: https://www.kateatkinson.co.uk/about/
Asia Mackay
Mackay is described by her literary agency as a Chinese Scottish author and mother of four based in London.
Killing It: Meet Lex Tyler. She's a covert operative for Platform Eight, the assassination department of Her Majesty's Secret Service, and one of the very few women to successfully negotiate the old boy's network of the espionage world. Her new assignment is a high-stakes hit. Her target: Russian oligarch Dmitri Tupolev. But the more she digs into his life, the more Lex wonders if there isn't a different game going on - one in which she might be an unsuspecting casualty.
Helen Macinnes
Helen Clark MacInnes was born in 1907 in Glasgow. MacInnes wrote 21 espionage thrillers, four of which were adapted as films. Her early books were set during the Second World War. Her first was Above Suspicion (1941). She was married to a British spy and they travelled extensively in Germany before the outbreak of war, which must have helped. In her later books, MacInnes shifted her subject matter to the Cold War. The Venetian Affair, for example, published in 1963 and set in Paris and Venice, involves Soviet agents and sleeper cells, alludes to events unfolding in Algeria and Vietnam, and contains a conspiracy to assassinate Charles de Gaulle. She continued to produce about one book every two years until her final novel, Ride a Pale Horse (1984).
Her first spy novel is still in print:
Lara Prescott
Prescott is described as an ‘instant New York Times bestselling author’ for The Secrets We Kept. Her website describes the novel as ‘a thrilling tale of secretaries turned spies, of love, duty, and sacrifice. Inspired by the CIA plot to infiltrate the hearts of Soviet Russia, not with propaganda, but with the greatest love story of the 20th century: Doctor Zhivago. From Moscow and the Gulag to D.C. and Paris, The Secrets We Kept captures a watershed moment in the history of literature. Told with soaring emotional intensity and captivating historical detail, and centered on the belief that a piece of art can change the world.’
Her website: https://www.laraprescott.com
Gayle Lynds
Lynds has been called the ‘Reigning Queen of Espionage Fiction’ in the United States. Her novel Masquerade is described by Amazon as follows: ‘Liz Sansborough wakes up one morning in a house she doesn't know, with a man she doesn't know, unable to remember her own name or anything that has ever happened to her. Already terrified, she is almost instantly plunged into incredible danger -- and discovers that she's a crack shot and a CIA employee. She must navigate through a world of corrupt secret agents, international terrorism, and mind-altering drugs without knowing who her enemies are or what the truth is.’
Her website: https://gaylelynds.com/novels/
Lauren Wilkinson
Lauren Wilkinson’s debut novel American Spy was published to acclaim by Random House in February 2019 in the US and in the UK by Dialogue Books. Barack Obama included American Spy in his summer reading list. It was also singled out by The New York Times as one of the year’s most significant novels.
Here’s a link:
That’s my sample. I hope the witers are of interest. There are, of course, many, many more to choose from, and I apologise to those I’ve left out…
Please don’t forget to sign on at my Home Page for a free PDF copy of Emperor, a fast and authentic spy thriller set mostly in Beijing and Washington DC.
April, 2026
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