According to the Telegraph, anyway. An interesting list. Several if not most of these were that author's first published novel. I've actually read half of these, though it's been years. I should read them again.
- The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon (1959)
- The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy (1984)
- Killing Floor by Lee Child (1997)
- On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming (1963)
- The Spy Who Came in from the Cnew by John le Carré (1963)
- Where Eagles Dare by Alistair MacLean (1967)
- The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (1969)
- Carrie by Stephen King (1974)
- Marathon Man by William Goldman (1974)
- The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (1980)
- Jaws by Peter Benchley (1974)
- The World at Night by Alan Furst (1996)
- The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (2003)
- The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915)
- Honorable mention:
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1844)
- The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers (1903)
- The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy (1905)
- The Third Man and other stories by Graham Greene (1949)
- The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth (1971)
- Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith (1981)
- A Time to Kill by John Grisham (1989)
- Los Alamos by Joseph Kanon (1997)
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012)
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