Engelstalige politieke thrillers

1. Thomas , Pynchon

Vineland

The inspiration for One Battle After AnotherThomas Pynchon's wretchedly funny dystopian thriller, sending up the end days of the American dreamVineland, a zone of blessed anarchy in northern California, is the last refuge of hippiedom, a culture devastated by the sobriety epidemic, Reaganomics, and the Tube. Here, in an Orwellian 1984, Zoyd Wheeler and his daughter Prairie search for Prairie's long-lost mother, a Sixties radical who ran off with a narc.Full of quasi-allegorical characters, elaborate unresolved subplots, corny songs, movie spoofs, and illicit sex, Vineland is vintage Pynchon.'That rarest of birds: a major political novel about what America has been doing to itself, to its children, all these many years' Salman Rushdie

1. Elliot , Ackerman

Sheepdogs

TWO MISFITS.ONE MISSION.ZERO BACK-UP.WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?'You know Slow Horses - now meet the Sheepdogs . . . glorious . . . hilarious' SUNDAY TIMES'A rollicking military-adjacent adventure . . . replete with jet-setting paramilitary types, secret meetings at the highest level of government and firefights, with some rough sex and women in peril added for good measure' WASHINGTON POSTSkwerl and Cheese are down on their luck after being screwed over by the US military. Skwerl used to work for the CIA's elite paramilitary wing until he was unceremoniously fired after a raid went bad in Afghanistan. Big Cheese Aziz, a legendary Afghan pilot also formerly employed by the CIA, is stuck working the graveyard shift at the local gas station.Armed with a ton of unique and not obviously useful skills for peacetime living, both are recruited into a shadowy network of so-called 'sheepdogs' working jobs for an anonymous dispatcher.Their first mission? To repossess a luxury private jet stranded on a remote Ugandan airfield. Their fee: a cut of the jet's $5 million value. But nothing about the job adds up. Their contact vanishes. Their handler's motives are suspect. And when the women in their lives get involved - one pregnant wife and one dominatrix - the stakes skyrocket overnight.From the jungles of Kampala to the glitz of Marseille, Sheepdogs is a sly, hilarious, action-packed thriller introducing an instantly iconic spy duo. Operating in the moral grey zone between predator and prey, this is a wild ride through the absurd underworld of war and intelligence.'Skwerl, Cheese, Dickhead Mike, the White Russian - these characters are totally addictive. I couldn't put Sheepdogs down. A thriller and comedy in one, it's a wild ride' HARLAN COBEN'Sheepdogs is the best thriller I've read in a long, long time. With a perfect blend of action and humor, I was hooked from the first page and couldn't put it down until I'd finished . . . an absolute gem of a novel' KEVIN POWERS

1. John Niven

The F*ck-it List

Gripping, terrifying and hilarious – John Niven is our Hunter S. Thompson.

1. Louis Urbanowski

The Right Members Club

1. N Michael Kalos

The Murray Hill Boys

1. Aaron Abilene

Paper Soldiers