Books Like I Am Pilgrim: 10 Gripping Spy Reads to Devour Next

Terry Hayes's I Am Pilgrim is a book people finish in a daze and then cannot replace. Scott Murdoch, codename Pilgrim, a retired American intelligence agent who once wrote the definitive textbook on forensic investigation, is pulled back in when a murder in a Manhattan hotel room copies his own book, and then into a hunt across Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Europe for a lone jihadist with a plan to bring the West to its knees. Nine hundred pages, unhurried and digressive at first and then relentless; meticulous tradecraft, a two-narrator cat-and-mouse, enormous set pieces, and an antagonist you follow as closely as the hero.

The readers who come to us afterwards want the same things, and no single book is all of them: a smart, globe-trotting thriller with a lone, highly competent protagonist, tradecraft that feels real, a formidable enemy you also get to watch, and ideally a doorstop you can live inside for a week. So here are ten that each take a different part of that and do it superbly, from the classics Hayes is measured against to modern writers who served in the trade themselves. Where a book starts a series, we have said so.

What to read after I Am Pilgrim

The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva

Gabriel Allon, art restorer and former Israeli intelligence operative, has kept his past well behind him until he is called back into the game and teamed with an agent who hides behind her own cover as a fashion model; their target is a Palestinian terrorist on one last killing spree who played a dark part in Gabriel's past. The first in the Gabriel Allon series, and Silva is the author readers name most often when asked what to read after Pilgrim. The same competent loner dragged out of retirement, at a smaller, faster scale.

Find The Kill Artist at Ever After Books

Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews

Dominika Egorova, a former prima ballerina, is forced into Russian intelligence and its sparrow school; Nate Nash, an idealistic young CIA officer, is handling MARBLE, the agency's most valuable mole in Moscow, and their paths cross across Europe in a game of betrayal and counter-betrayal. Written by a thirty-three-year CIA veteran, so the tradecraft is the real thing. First of a trilogy, and as close to Hayes's blend of detail and momentum as modern spy fiction gets.

Find Red Sparrow at Ever After Books

The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth

A tall, grey-eyed Englishman, a killer at the top of his profession and unknown to any secret service, takes a contract on the most heavily guarded man in the world, Charles de Gaulle, and a French detective has days to find a man who does not officially exist. The original procedural manhunt, with two narratives converging minute by minute. It is the book Hayes is most often measured against, and it has lost none of its grip.