Clementine, or Clem, a septuagenarian perfume artist dressed impeccably in men’s clothes, is sent on a mission by her songbird client to retrieve a book of perfume recipes key to reuniting the chanteuse with her parfumier father, in hiding from the Nazis. This is the queer spy novel about WWII Paris that I never knew I needed and now could not possibly consider living without. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief Vidich brings a keen observational eye to every character who moves through the pages of this vivid, compelling novel. In short, nobody can be trusted, everyone is suspected of double-crossing and subterfuge, and in the midst of it all they’re expected to pull off one of the most daring operations in the agency’s history. And the request is for another former defector, now working with the CIA, to lead the team. A senior KGB officer approaches the CIA with an eye toward defection, but he needs exfiltration from Moscow, a feat the CIA has never been able to pull off.

The Mercenary ushers us into the intricate, erratic years of the Soviet Union’s final decline, when both sides viewed the other with heightened suspicion and every interaction seemed to be a ploy. Paul Vidich, among the very finest espionage novelists of the contemporary era, brings forward a stunner this year, with a deeply researched and deeply felt character study. Things start to heat up when an underling stumbles on a suspicious use of data, and the two begin an epic game of cat-and-mouse with gasp-worthy consequences. 12 years later, she’s one of the most powerful women in Silicon Valley, sending sensitive information to her Russian handlers when she’s not busy crushing the competition to her social media company employer or being the keynote speaker on work/life balance at yet another conference. In 2006, Julia Lerner is an orphaned Muscovite with a computer science degree. This is the Silicon Valley spy novel we’ve all been waiting for, with a side order of biting satire and furious feminism. The CrimeReads editors round up the year’s best espionage fiction.

Espionage.