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Series

Spy Masters

The Spy Masters quartet ranges from D-Day deception and wartime Switzerland to the fall of Vienna and the long shadow of the Cold War. The Best of Our Spies is rooted in Operation Fortitude and occupied France; The Swiss Spy uses neutral Switzerland and the approach to Operation Barbarossa; Vienna Spies shifts towards Anglo-Soviet rivalry in 1945; and The Berlin Spies links the fall of Nazi Germany with espionage in divided Berlin three decades later.

Recurring intelligence figures bind the books together, but the principal missions remain fictional. The sequence is historically cumulative: the wartime struggle against Germany gradually gives way to distrust between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, allowing the fourth novel to carry the series directly into Cold War Berlin.

Reading order

Books in this series (4 books)

The Best of Our Spies cover

1. The Best of Our Spies

Alex Gerlis

4.8(16,384)

In the summer of 1944 SOE agent Nathalie Mercier disappears in the Pas-de-Calais while working with the French Resistance. Her husband Owen Quinn, an officer in Royal Navy intelligence, discovers that her work has been tied to the elaborate Allied deception surrounding D-Day and sets out…

The Swiss Spy cover

2. The Swiss Spy

Alex Gerlis

4.6(7,651)

On the eve of the Second World War Henry Hunter is intercepted by British intelligence and drawn into a complicated existence of competing identities and spymasters. Operating from neutral Switzerland, he undertakes increasingly dangerous missions into Nazi Germany while trying to protect secrets from his own…

Vienna Spies cover

3. Vienna Spies

Alex Gerlis

4.7(6,061)

In the final months of the war British intelligence expects the Soviet Union to dominate Austria unless it can establish its own political and espionage influence in Vienna. Major Edgar sends two agents into the city to locate an Austrian political figure and win him to…

The Berlin Spies cover

4. The Berlin Spies

Alex Gerlis

4.7(6,086)

The Berlin Spies opens in the dying days of Nazi Germany, when SS men prepare schemes intended to preserve a future for the movement after military defeat. Three decades later a compromised British diplomat in East Berlin turns to retired spymaster Major Edgar, drawing him back…