Books like A matter of honour by Mason, Philip.

A Soviet nuclear submarine marked for defection slips into the Atlantic, sparking a high‑stakes pursuit by the United States and the Soviet Union in this tense Cold War thriller.

Jason Bourne, a deep‑cover operative with no memory, is rescued after a beachwreck and discovers a bank account embedded in his body that leads him to Switzerland and the truth about his past.

John le Carré’s Cold‑War spy thriller follows British agent Alec Leamas as he takes one last perilous assignment to outwit East German intelligence.

A Cold War spy memoir that revisits George Smiley's past, revealing the bravery and cunning of a man who has seen it all.

Court Gentry, known as The Gray Man, is a legendary assassin who moves from job to job, never leaving a trace. Facing lethal adversaries, he must prove that there is no gray area between killing for a living and killing to survive.

Highlights of British rule in India and of the Great Indian Army from 1858, when the 300-year-old Honorable East India Company--a commercial enterprise that literally commanded an army in India--was absorbed into the Empire and passed into the care of Her Majesty's Government, until the last British troops departed in 1948 following Independence. Farwell (The Great War in Africa, The Great Anglo-Boer War, Eminent Victorian Soldiers, etc.) has a rousing sense of military history, the kind often parodied in British films like Four Feathers, where old Army officers begin laying out campaigns and troop deployments with saltcellars, walnuts, and napkin rings on the dinner table. Typically, we read here about the Third Afghan War of 1919, during which Brigadier-General Dyer, ""although tired and ill, pumped new life into his brigade and under a blistering sun, with forced marches on little food and water. . .pushed his own men forward to rescue Thal and send the Afghans flying homeward."" And so on. You need a very special interest, such as a fancy toy-soldier collection, to relish this kind of material. But even so, the larger picture remains, and many colorful moments are stamped onto memory. The Bengal Mutiny of 1857, begun when Hindu and Muslim soldiers refused on religious grounds to bite new rifle cartridges smeared with cow and pig lard, wiped out any social intercourse between Briton and Indian. Friendliness and hospitality vanished; the Mutiny was ""a psychological watershed. . ."" We follow the Imperial Assemblage celebrating Queen Victoria as Empress of India, the rise of venereal disease among the military, the tragedy of the Amritsar Massacre of 1914 and the muddled early idealism of Gandhi, the role of the Japanese in polarizing nationalist fervor during WW II, and the sad horrors of Independence. Vigorous but for a limited audience.