Joseph Kanon's “historial” espionage fiction

All of bestselling American author Joseph Kanon's eleven novels to date are historical reconstructions harking back to World War II and its aftermath. Three of his espionage-centered narratives— The Prodigal Spy (1998), Defectors (2017), and The Accomplice (2019)—craft “historial” tales within the context of post-World War II historiography to suggest the radical contingency of historical outcomes in modernity. Kanon's success in this diegetic endeavor as a post-postmodernist writer, it has been claimed, makes him a worthy successor to such British precursors as Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, and John le Carré.