Experts > Matt Lynn

Matt Lynn's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Matt Lynn recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Matt Lynn's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

The Odessa File

Can you forgive the past?

It's 1963 and a young German reporter has been assigned the suicide of a holocaust survivor. The news story seems straighforward, this is a tragic insight into one man's suffering. But a long hidden secret is discovered in the pages of the dead man's diary.

What follows is life-and-death hunt for a notorious former concentration camp-commander, a man responsible for the deaths of thousands, a man as yet unpunished. Forsyth's second novel (after The Day of The Jackal) is as compulsively exciting and explosive as his first, and was...
more
Recommended by Matt Lynn, Guy Walters, and 2 others.

Matt LynnThis book sets the template for the lightening paced thrillers with conspiracies and action, cutting from place to place, information, a kind of gung-ho attitude. (Source)

Guy WaltersFreddie had been Reuters correspondent in Germany and was aware that there was a significant number of former Nazis ending up in government and Simon Wiesenthal told him about Odessa. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

2
Long-awaited reissue of the first part of the classic spy trilogy, GAME, SET and MATCH, when the Berlin Wall divided not just a city but a world.


East is East and West is West - and they meet in Berlin…


He was the best source the Department ever had, but now he desperately wanted to come over the Wall. ‘Brahms Four’ was certain a high-ranking mole was set to betray him. There was only one Englishman he trusted any more: someone from the old days.


So they decided to put Bernard Samson back into the field after five sedentary years of flying a...
more
Recommended by Matt Lynn, and 1 others.

Matt LynnThe first (and best) of the Game, Set and Match trilogy, the height of Deighton’s achievements. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

3

Ice Station Zebra

Under the Polar Ice-Cap ....

The atomic submarine 'Dolphin' has impossible orders: to sail beneath the ice-floes of the Arctic Ocean to locate and rescue the men of weather-station Zebra, gutted by fire and drifting with the ice-pack somewhere north of the Arctic Circle.

But the orders do not say what the 'Dolphin' will find if she succeeds – that the fire at Ice Station Zebra was sabotage, and that one of the survivors is a killer…
less
Recommended by Matt Lynn, and 1 others.

Matt LynnHe’s very good on place and action, small groups of men in terrifying conditions and how they relate to each other. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

4

The Wreck of the Mary Deare

The battered hulk of a huge ship looms out of the stinging spray of a furious gale. Only one man, half-mad, remains aboard, working without sleep or sustenance to save her from sinking.

But this man is no hero, and this ship was not meant to be saved. As Hammond Innes' classic tale moves from desperate struggles on the sea to a nail-biting courtroom controversy, the murky truth about the last voyage of the Mary Deare finally comes to light.
less
Recommended by Matt Lynn, and 1 others.

Matt LynnInnes is a great adventure writer … He’s really the missing link between writers like John Buchan and the modern thriller. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

5

Journey Into Fear

Returning to his hotel room after a late-night flirtation with a cabaret dancer at an Istanbul boîte, Graham is surprised by an intruder with a gun. What follows is a nightmare of intrigue for the English armaments engineer as he makes his way home aboard an Italian freighter. Among the passengers are a couple of Nazi assassins intent on preventing his returning to England with plans for a Turkish defense system, the seductive cabaret dancer and her manager husband, and a number of surprising allies. Thrilling, intense, and masterfully plotted, Journey Into Fear is a classic suspense... more
Recommended by Matt Lynn, and 1 others.

Matt LynnThis is a claustrophobic story set on a ship full of German spies and the hero is an English spy. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read Matt Lynn's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.