Recommended authors for military and spy fiction

Ok, I thought I might bring some life to this section. Besides superwomen, I'm into military and spy fiction. I recommend all the books by Tom Clancy starting with The Hunt For Red October, Frederick Forsyth's The OdeSSa File, Peter Nieswand's Scimitar, and Charles Robertson's Red Chameleon. Now for the fiction more geared towards the military, there are a whole gamut of books written by former Air Force Captain Dale Brown, I suggest you start with Flight Of The Old Dog or you might get lost. Another great military fiction author is Stephen Coonts. I'm sure some of you remember that his book Flight Of The Intruder was turned into a big budget Hollywood movie in the 80's.

If anyone is intersted in armor read Micheal Farmer's two books Tin Soldiers, and Iron Tigers. Great novels!

I havent read any of those mentioned above, except for clancy - one about rich environmentalists releasing virus to kill off everyone in world in Sydney 2000 olympics to save the world's forests. (The title escapes me)

For those who like non-fiction military, I have read the following and they are pretty good.

Blackhawk down - Mark Bowden, (a slightly different account of the incident on which the movie by the same name was based on)

Bravo Two Zero and Immediate Action - Andy McNab (SAS in first Iraq conflict, and also Andy's earlier years in Northern Ireland, South America and Borneo)

Hostile Waters - Peter Huchthausen & Igor Kurdin and R. Alan White (Account of the men of russian K-219, that had a problem with nuclear reactor with potential for causing a disaster on scale of chernobyl on the eastern seaboard of USA. The russians saving america, hehehe)

Blindman's Bluff - Sherry Sontag (A history of the development and incidents of the submarine from the civil war wooden subs to the latest cold war collissions - mostly US subs)

I havent read any of those mentioned above, except for clancy - one about rich environmentalists releasing virus to kill off everyone in world in Sydney 2000 olympics to save the world's forests. (The title escapes me)

I believe the title of that is Rainbow Six .

Thunder Run is a great nonfic about the 3ID taking Baghadad. It wasn't as easy as they made it look on TV. Recomend this book for any military history buffs

Speaking about nonfics, a great biography/autobiography is Into The Storm. Tom Clancy wrote the intro to it while General Fred Franks Jr. tells the rest of his story in the book.

For naval fiction try James Cobb starting with "Choosers of the Slain" and Patrick Robinson starting with "Nimitz Class." Both series are set slightly in the future (less than a decade, so ships are still "wet-navy").

The Cobb series has an added bonus in that the lead character (who starts out as the CO of a stealth destroyer) is an attractive woman.

I would say that when it comes to military books then you can't go wrong with Sven Hassel - they certainly killed off any illusions i had about war when i was a kid