The best espionage novels cater to our fantasies while still persuading us of the authenticity of their worlds. Of the titles published this year, two stand out in the field, and each author understands that, in fiction, veracity is not the same as authenticity. In Hemingway’s words: ‘All good novels have one thing in common. They are truer than if they had really happened.’

White Fox (Bantam, £18.99) is the concluding volume of a trilogy of thrillers by Owen Matthews, one of the best of many western writers on Russia. It can happily be read on its own, though it is sufficiently gripping to send readers back to the earlier two books. It begins in 1963, shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy. Matthews’s protagonist, Alexander Vasin, a KGB officer, is now the director of a labour camp deep in Siberia, having effectively been exiled by his enemy and superior, General Orlov. After a prisoner arrives with armed escorts, Vasin is mystified when Orlov orders the escorts to be killed. It soon emerges that the new arrival has a secret which Orlov’s distant superiors are desperate to keep from getting out: Lee Harvey Oswald shot the American president on the orders of the KGB.

When the inmates of the camp revolt, Vasin and the mysterious prisoner are forced to flee. What follows is an extended chase in which the hunted are themselves also hunting – for the truth: it is a kind of Russian version of The Thirty-Nine Steps. A lot of groundis covered, literally: the action moves from the frozen tundra of the camp to a village west of Kirov, where Vasin is stranded for three days, then to Leningrad and the magnificent Catherine Palace.

Throughout, we are deeply immersed in a Soviet Russia vacillating between persisting pride at defeating the Nazis and misery at the failure of victory to make Russia a happier place to live in. The book is steeped in Russian history and mores; Matthews even knows the difference between the window blinds in the three classes of a 1960s Russian train. But his learning is unostentatiously conveyed, and the narrative is never swamped, as is so often the case, by tell-all use of an author’s research.

The plot’s premise – that the KGB were responsible for Kennedy’s assassination – is not one held by Matthews or anyone credible today. He acknowledges in an afterword that this central conceit is fantastic, but hopes it is nonetheless a plausible one; and such is the impact of the story as it progresses that we willingly suspend disbelief for the sake of an engrossing read.

In David McCloskey’s Damascus Station (Swift Press, £9.99), Sam Joseph, a CIA officer, feels responsible for the abduction and murder of a colleague by the Syrian authorities. He volunteers to avenge the agent’s death, and to persuade Mariam Haddad, a Syrian official, to work secretly for the Americans while she pursues her duties coercing exiled Syrians. Joseph’s recruitment of Mariam succeeds, and then some: quite unexpectedly, the two find themselves in love. Since knowledge of their affair would result in Joseph’s immediate dismissal, the secrecy in which the couple have to operate now doubles, which cranks up the tension in what is already a tautly told story.

Unusually, the novel features points of view from both ‘sides’ of the mission underway, including those of two Syrian government officials who are brothers, one of them the head of the secret police. There is little fraternal love between them; they spend as much time intriguing against each other as they do rooting out the traitor in their ranks. The corrupt brutality of President Assad’s immediate circle is chillingly portrayed, and includes an appearance by Assad himself.

Since McCloskey is a former CIA analyst specialising in the Middle East, much has been made of the book’s ‘realism’. The novel comes festooned with praise from members of the intelligence world, including David Petraeus, once director of the CIA. He declares it ‘the best spy novel I have ever read’, a commendation roughly akin to that of a wheat farmer praising a baker – which is to say, related but irrelevant. The real strengths here are the traditional ones of superior thrillers: clear and powerful writing, subtle characterisation that never slows the story down and action scenes that are brutal and immediate. I can’t assess McCloskey’s credentials as a spy, but he shows the confidence of a talented writer. This is a book by someone who understands that, paradoxically, when ‘real life’ is transplanted unaltered into fiction it rarely seems credible. Damascus Station excels precisely because it relies on imaginative power.

Simon Mason’s A Killing in November, published last year, was a remarkable entry into crime writing by a veteran author. Its successor, The Broken Afternoon (riverrun, £16.99), features writing just as good, but it involves a balancing act that Mason will need to resolve if he carries the series forward.

The first novel introduced as its protagonist the awkward, self-destructive and utterly compelling detective Ryan Wilkins. He has a senior colleague sidekick named, in a truly lifelike coincidence, Ray Wilkins – a black detective whose establishment credentials (Balliol, boxing blue and rapid climb up the constabulary ladder) mean he serves as a foil to Ryan, his near-namesake.

In the latest novel, Ryan has been booted out of the force after one misdemeanour too many and is now working as a security guard in the outskirts of Oxford. When a little girl is abducted from her nursery, Ray is given both the case and a new prominence in the narrative. For all his accomplishments, he is a troubled character, with a marriage that is faltering, despite his wife’s much yearned for pregnancy. He makes heavy weather of the case, driving his impatient boss to make overtures to the recently cashiered Ryan, who, for all his foibles, gets results.

Atypically for an Oxford-based thriller, the university plays no part in the story – a refreshing recognition that Mason’s imaginative take on college clichés in the earlier book would, if repeated, threaten to become a cliché itself. Mason (who lives in Oxford) writes well about this unacademic version of the city, moving easily from the nouveau villas of Boars Hill to the greyer streets of Blackbird Leys. He also contrives a truly startling surprise at one point, based on a misidentification. The prose is singularly good and the sentences sing.

The problem remains, however, that in trying to devote equal attention to his co-protagonists, the author ducks the fact that Ray, the black Balliol grad, is by far the less interesting of the two. The focus on him in this sequel seems obligatory rather than natural or earned; throughout the many scenes told from his point of view we find ourselves waiting impatiently for Ryan to reappear. It’s like watching an understudy perform when you know a more riveting actor is backstage, waiting to come on. Ryan is almost irredeemably gauche and self-destructive (sometimes frustratingly so), but he is still the obvious star of any show he’s part of. As the series proceeds, Mason should drop his efforts to balance the attention given the two detectives and put Ryan firmly back centre stage.