Recommendations based on The Manchurian Candidateby Richard Condon

* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans

  1. The Eagle Has Landed

    by Jack Higgins
    A daring mission to kidnap Winston Churchill from his English home in World War II.

    In November of 1943, an elite team of Nazi paratroopers descends on British soil with a diabolical goal: to abduct Winston Churchill and cripple the Allied war effort. The mission, ordered by Hitler ... (Goodreads)

  2. The Day of the Jackal

    by Frederick Forsyth
    An assassin attempts to kill the president of France in a thrilling race against time.

    The book begins in 1962 with the (historical) failed attempt on de Gaulle 's life plotted by, among others, Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry in the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart : ... (Wikipedia)

  3. The Ipcress File

    by Len Deighton
    A British spy investigates a brainwashing scheme. Full of twists and turns, it's a classic espionage thriller.

    The novel is framed as the unnamed protagonist delivering his personal report on "the IPCRESS affair" directly to the Minister of Defence , thus making the novel itself the 'IPCRESS File' of the ... (Wikipedia)

  4. The Odessa File

    by Frederick Forsyth
    The uncovering of a sinister Nazi plot, while searching for the truth of a young boy's death.

    In November 1963, shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy , Peter Miller, a German freelance crime reporter, follows an ambulance to the apartment of Salomon Tauber, a Holocaust survivor ... (Wikipedia)

  5. The Bourne Supremacy

    by Robert Ludlum
    An ex-CIA agent must clear his name from charges of espionage and murder.

    In the first book,, The Bourne Identity, , the title character suffers amnesia . Over the course of the book, he regains his memory with the help of a Canadian economist, Marie St Jacques, and ... (Wikipedia)

  6. Gorky Park

    by Martin Cruz Smith
    A thrilling murder mystery, set in the Soviet Union, uncovering secrets and conspiracies.

    The story follows Arkady Renko , a chief investigator for the Moscow militsiya , who is assigned to a case involving three corpses found in Gorky Park , an amusement park in Moscow. The victims - two ... (Wikipedia)

  7. Six Days of the Condor

    by James Grady
    A CIA researcher returns from lunch to find his colleagues murdered. He must evade the killers and uncover the truth.

    Ronald Malcolm is a CIA employee who works in a clandestine operations office in Washington, D.C. responsible for analyzing the plots of mystery and spy novels. One day, when he should be in the ... (Wikipedia)

  8. Smiley's People

    by John le Carré
    Retired spy Smiley is thrust back into the world of espionage to uncover a deadly conspiracy.

    John le Carre's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge and have earned him – and his hero, British ... (Goodreads)

  9. The General's Daughter

    by Nelson DeMille
    A murder investigation of a general's daughter leads to uncovering dark secrets of the military.

    Captain Ann Campbell is a West Point graduate, the daughter of legendary General "Fighting Joe" Campbell. She is the pride of Fort Hadley until, one morning, her body is found naked and bound on the ... (Wikipedia)

  10. Eye of the Needle

    by Ken Follett
    A thrilling tale of espionage and wartime romance, set in the chaos of WWII.

    In 1940, Henry Faber, a German spy nicknamed 'die Nadel' ('The Needle') due to his trademark weapon being a stiletto , is working at a London railway depot, collecting information on troop movements. ... (Wikipedia)

  11. The Eiger Sanction

    by Trevanian
    Art professor and assassin Jonathan Hemlock is forced to climb the treacherous Eiger mountain to complete a deadly mission.

    Dr. Jonathan Hemlock is an art professor and mountaineer . He is also a collector of paintings, most of them obtained from the black market . To finance his collection Hemlock, who served in a ... (Wikipedia)

  12. The Bourne Identity

    by Robert Ludlum
    An amnesiac assassin must uncover his past and true identity in a deadly search for the truth.

    The preface of the novel consists of two real-life newspaper articles from 1975 about terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known as " Carlos the Jackal ." The story opens with gunfire on a boat in the ... (Wikipedia)

  13. The Bourne Objective

    by Eric Van Lustbader
    Jason Bourne is on a mission to uncover a global conspiracy involving a mysterious group known as "The Severed Man."

    After Bourne is ambushed and nearly killed while in Indonesia, he fakes his death to take on a new identity and mission- to find out who is trying to assassinate him. In the process, Bourne begins to ... (Goodreads)

  14. Marathon Man

    by William Goldman
    A young man's race against time to save his family from a deadly conspiracy.

    Tom "Babe" Levy is a runner in every sense: racing tirelessly toward his goals of athletic and academic excellence–and endlessly away from the specter of his famous father's scandal-driven suicide. ... (Goodreads)

  15. The Russia House

    by John le Carré
    An espionage mission filled with suspense and intrigue set during the Cold War.

    In 1987, Bartholomew "Barley" Scott Blair, a British publisher , is at a book fair in Moscow . With business friends he goes on a drunken retreat to a secluded dacha in the forest near Peredelkino . ... (Wikipedia)

  16. Ice Station Zebra

    by Alistair MacLean
    An explosive mission to rescue a British spy from a remote Arctic base.

    Drift ice Station Zebra, a British meteorological station built on an ice floe in the Arctic Sea , suffers a catastrophic oil fire; several of its men die, and their shelter and supplies are ... (Wikipedia)

  17. The Dogs of War

    by Frederick Forsyth
    Mercenary mission to overthrow a corrupt African dictatorship.

    1970: The prologue shows "Cat" Shannon and his fellow mercenaries leaving a West African war they have lost, saying their goodbyes to the General , who employed them for six months. A few weeks ... (Wikipedia)

  18. From Here to Eternity

    by James Jones
    Tragic tale of fate and destiny, set in the backdrop of World War II.

    In February 1941, Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt, nicknamed "Prew", reports to his new posting at G Company, a US Army infantry unit stationed at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. Prew is a career soldier ... (Wikipedia)

  19. The Charm School

    by Nelson DeMille
    A former CIA agent must stop a group of ex-KGB agents from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

    The novel's hero is U.S Air Force Colonel Sam Hollis, a former F-4 Phantom Fighter pilot , who fought in Vietnam . Hollis was shot down during the war , and was disqualified from flying. Later on he ... (Wikipedia)

  20. From Russia With Love

    by Ian Fleming
    James Bond is sent to Istanbul to retrieve a Russian decoding machine, but is caught in a deadly game of espionage and seduction.

    SMERSH , the Soviet counterintelligence agency, plans to commit a grand act of terrorism in the intelligence field. For this, it targets British secret service agent James Bond . Due in part to his ... (Wikipedia)

  21. The Hunt for Red October

    by Tom Clancy
    A thrilling adventure of a submarine captain's race against the clock in a thrilling game of cat and mouse.

    During the Cold War ,(the story must be set in 1982, according to the days assigned to the dates in the novel, e.g. Dec. 17 was a Friday only in 1982,1976 and 1971 ) Marko Ramius, a Soviet Navy ... (Wikipedia)

  22. The Bone Collector

    by Jeffery Deaver
    A detective and a forensic specialist race against time to stop a serial killer.

    Lincoln Rhyme was once a brilliant criminologist, a genius in the field of forensics – until an accident left him physically and emotionally shattered. But now a diabolical killer is challenging ... (Goodreads)

  23. A Confederacy of Dunces

    by John Kennedy Toole
    A satirical tale of an eccentric slacker's misadventures in New Orleans.

    Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found, here, "A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles ... (Goodreads)

  24. Clear and Present Danger

    by Tom Clancy
    CIA analyst Jack Ryan uncovers a covert war against drug cartels in Colombia, leading to a dangerous mission to stop the violence.

    The President of the United States , who is running for reelection, finds a fierce opponent in Ohio Governor J. Robert Fowler, who has rallied the American public behind his administration's failures ... (Wikipedia)

  25. Motherless Brooklyn

    by Jonathan Lethem
    A detective investigates a powerful crime syndicate in New York City.

    Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn’s very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in the most startling and original ways. ... (Goodreads)

  26. The Name of the Rose

    by Umberto Eco
    A Franciscan friar investigates a series of murders in a medieval monastery, uncovering a sinister plot.

    In 1327, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and Adso of Melk , a Benedictine novice travelling under his protection, arrive at a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy to attend a theological ... (Wikipedia)

  27. The Snowman

    by Jo Nesbø
    Detective Harry Hole investigates a series of grisly murders, with the help of a mysterious snowman.

    In 1980, a married woman has illicit sex with a lover while her adolescent son waits in a car outside; their lovemaking is disturbed when they think somebody is looking at them from outside the ... (Wikipedia)

  28. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

    by Alan Bradley
    A young girl's detective journey to solve a murder mystery in a picturesque English village.

    As the novel opens, Flavia Sabina de Luce schemes revenge against her two older sisters, Ophelia (17) and Daphne (13), who have locked her inside a closet in Buckshaw, the family's country manor home ... (Wikipedia)

  29. East of Eden

    by John Steinbeck
    Exploration of the timeless struggle between good and evil, set against a backdrop of a family saga.

    In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas ... (Goodreads)

  30. I, Claudius

    by Robert Graves
    An epic tale of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, told through the eyes of a dynasty's forgotten leader.

    Into the 'autobiography' of Clau-Clau-Claudius, the pitiful stammerer who was destined to become Emperor in spite of himself, Graves packs the everlasting intrigues, the depravity, the bloody purges ... (Goodreads)