NEW 2025 SPY FICTION BY JOHN LAWTON, SHANKARI CHANDRAN AND JOSEPH FINDER

Here are three very good, and very different, thrillers to get your spy reading off to a good start in 2025.

Fans of spy fiction after something a little different, and with a literary flavour, will enjoy Shankari Chandran’s Unfinished Business, (Ultimo Press, 1 January 2025).

Australian author Shankari Chandran is probably best known for the highly accomplished and reflective Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, which won the 2023 Miles Franklin Literary Award. But now with Unfinished Business she has turned her attention to the spy genre, with very good results.

The book opens in Sri Lanka in 2009. Decades of civil war and bloodshed are finally being brought to an end by any means necessary. In the capital, Colombo, tenacious journalist Ameena Fernando is murdered, execution-style, on a busy street near her home, with no witnesses. With pressure in America growing to find Ameena’s killer, CIA agent Ellie Harper is sent to seek justice for the journalist’s death, with strict instructions: find something, but not too much.

Ellie has been on stress leave and non-agency work, since her last mission in Sri Lanka four years ago, which went tragically wrong. She sees the return to the island as providing a chance to put some old ghosts to rest and maybe settle some scores. However, despite the pending peace Sri Lanka is still a very dangerous place full of corruption, secret agendas and bloodshed.

Told across two timelines, Unfinished Business is a powerful novel that impresses with its evocative descriptions and well sketched characters. The depiction of the situation in Sri Lanka, in both 2009 and 2005, is tragic and unnerving, and full of insight. The politics of the time are well captured and it gives a fresh understanding as to why so many Sri Lankans decided to flee as refugees. Although Unfinished Business pursues broader concerns, it is, at its core, a thriller, and Shankari has filled her book with all elements a spy reader would expect: an edgy, unrelenting hero with violent tendencies; plenty of intrigue; death and bloodshed; exotic descriptions; mystery; and an ending that delivers thrills and a final twist.

The two timelines work well, with both steadily heading towards dark and realistic conclusions. The characters and the sense of place are well done and convincing, and the writing is rich and interesting. Unfinished Business works well as a thriller, but it also has enough substance to keep you thinking long after you finished it. The end result is a gripping and original spy novel that provides an insightful look at South Asian international politics.

Unfinished Business was released in Australia on 1 January 2025. Release in the United Kingdom and the United States seems to be limited to an Audible edition in February 2025.

Veteran writer Joseph Finder’s The Oligarch’s Daughter, (Harper, 28 January 2025), takes some time to reveal its spy credentials, but it does have a good mix of FBI and CIA agents, Russian mobsters and the possibility of foreign influence. It is also a thrilling tale that combines crooked business dealings with an exciting chase through the New Hampshire wilderness.

Told through dual timelines, The Oligarch’s Daughter follows the escapades of Paul Brightman as he tries to regain control of his life. Paul has been living under an assumed name in a small New England town with a million-dollar bounty on his head. When his security is breached, Paul is forced to flee into the New Hampshire wilderness to evade the Russian operatives who can seemingly predict his every move.

Six years ago, Paul was a rising star on Wall Street who fell in love with a beautiful photographer named Tatyana, unaware that her father was a Russian oligarch and the object of considerable interest from several U.S. agencies. Now, to save his own life, Paul must unravel a decades-old conspiracy that extends to the highest reaches of the government.

This a very entertaining novel. The timeline about Paul Bright’s earlier life is a little slow to take off, but it is more than compensated for by the thrilling early chase through the wilderness. There are some fortunate coincidences towards the end, but not enough to detract from the enjoyment. Finder is very good at combining big business and criminal activity with international concerns, and the book really hooks you in. The scenes in Moscow are vivid and credible and the plot at the core of the book is well thought out. In all, another top read from a master of the genre.

The Oligarch’s Daughter is released in the United States on 28 January 2025. It is released in Australia on Kindle on 28 January 2025 and in book form by Head of Zeus on 3 June 2025.

Still some time off, but well worth putting on your ‘watch out for’ list, is John Lawton’s Smoke And Embers, (Atlantic Monthly/Grove Press, 13 May 2025).

Packaged as the ninth book in Lawton’s excellent series about Frederick Troy of Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad, Smoke And Embers skirts around the edge of the spy genre and only briefly features its titular central character.

In typical Lawton disregard for the progress of the series through the years, Smoke And Embers is set initially back in 1950, not long after the events in A Lily In The Field and well before the occurrences of the most recent Troy novel, Friends and Traitors. The book finds Lawton returning to the years following the end of World War II in Britain and opens with a seemingly inconsequential murder. However, things become more complicated when Chief Inspector Troy learns that his sergeant has been conducting an affair with the known mistress of an infamous London racketeer, Otto Ohnherz. Troy is immediately intrigued by the mysterious origins of Ohnherz’s second-in-command, Jay Fabian, who is a major contributor to all three British political parties and claims to have survived the concentration camps. Yet there is no proof supporting Fabian’s claims and the Intelligence agencies suspect that he is a Russian spy.

It is a good opening, but the book quickly moves onto other concerns and focuses on characters other than Troy. The impact of the War in Europe and Britain is a central concern, and the scenes set during the tail end of the Second World War are very well done and interesting. The depiction of the Final Solution and the flood of refugees at the end of the war is powerful and the book certainly contains a high level of emotional impact. Minor characters from the Troy and Joe Holderness (Wilderness) series float through the book and add interest for regular readers of the novels.

I won’t ruin the book by detailing the plot, other than to say that Troy is not a major player in the story, which is basically an intriguing mix of duplicity and reinvention in the aftermath of World War II and the horror of Hitler’s Final Solution. The ending, however, has that typical Lawton surprise factor.

The pacing throughout the book is leisurely, but never boring, as Lawton smoothly adds on layers of intrigue and deception, and fleshes out an interesting collection of characters. With a twisting plotline, crackling dialogue and characteristic humor, Smoke and Embers is, as the publishers say, “an exciting new addition to John Lawton’s masterful canon”. It also has a fascinating Afterword that expounds on the book’s themes and adds some details. A must read for fans of the series, and general aficionados of spy fiction and good writing. It is also a book that rewards a second read.

Smoke and Embers is released in the United Kingdom and the United States around 13 May 2025.

So, three very different, but good, novels of espionage for your 2025 reading. I particularly enjoyed the Lawton, but would encourage you search out Shankari Chandran’s Unfinished Business for the originality of its setting and story.