If you’re anything like us, you might be craving a different kind of political entertainment to the one taking over our screens these days. Luckily we have a great selection of fascinating political thrillers that are perfect for the job! So sit back, relax and enjoy some ‘old school’ political drama!
It’s 1945. Floyd Whitman discovers that ‘those scumbag communists’ have killed his father. He’s just a child, but he resolves to one day join the CIA. By 2003, America has triumphed over the Soviet Union, but the Russian mafia has become the most powerful, and certainly the most violent criminal group throughout the whole country. Through the fate of one man–young and full of illusions in 1965, but rather more embittered in 2003–we see the CIA help the Russian mafia get back on its feet in the squalid back rooms of the American empire. A great spy adventure comparable with the best of Hollywood thrillers.
In a future age where robots take care of most of the more tedious tasks, humans have a lot of time on their hands. So what to do with it? Well, obviously, they’re going to watch the Norman K. Barron show! Norman is a handsome and heroic policeman, whose dealings have already cost the life of his partner, who has now been replaced by Oshi Feal, a young recruit fresh out of police school. But nothing could have prepared Oshi for this kind of mission, where unexpected developments are a must… After all, you gotta keep the viewers happy!
Viktor Koralovski was Russia’s Oil King–a title that earned him the wrath of President Khanine and ten years in prison. An unexpected missile attack allows Koralovski to escape. However, he soon learns that while he was locked up, his friends and enemies have become almost indistinguishable, which leads to his current position at the center of a vast conspiracy that threatens to engulf the entire oil industry!
March 1953. Alexander is walking through the streets of London with a bomb in his hand. It is destined for Marshal Tito, during his controversial visit to Great Britain. Alexander’s story began several months earlier, when his mother was struck by a car and instantly killed. Trying to understand why and how his mother, who was in an institution for senile elderly people, wound up so far from her home, Alexander finds himself caug
ht up in a spiral of terror involving the British secret service, strange Serbian nationalists, and the island of Majorca… all of which culminates, several months later, with Alexander finding himself on the bank of the Thames, holding a bag with a bomb in it…
Sherman“The bill always comes due…” Jay Sherman is the American Dream come true: a self-made man who worked himself up from the streets to the upper echelons of moneyed society. But when his son Robert, a promising Democratic presidential candidate, is shot before his eyes, Sherman’s world spins into chaos. Threats on his life and that of his estranged daughter soon follow. An old mentor turned FBI chief steps up to offer his protection, but lacking any real leads, they can only look into Sherman’s past… which has more than its share of skeletons. A political thriller with Gatsbyesque overtones.
LenaWho is Lena? What is she up to? Does she even know her mission? Setting out from an East Berlin neighborhood that is home to former dignitaries, she goes about passing out small, innocent-seeming gifts from Budapest to Transylvania to Kiev. She crosses the Danube delta, the Black Sea, Anatolia, and the Aleppo bazaar. Each time, she crosses borders incognito, claiming to have nothing to declare. A journey at once timeless and inextricable from the great issues of our age, “Lena” combines the intimacy dear to André Juillard and Pierre Christin’s predilection for vast geopolitical canvases.
Julian Lethercore can read minds. Well, actually, what he reads are molecules, borne on saliva and other bodily fluids, with which he can access a person’s memories, the secrets of their very lives and identities. He’s also the result of a top secret military experiment gone wrong. He and the four other “bloodcogs” serve their master, Senator Pershing, a former warhawk now disgraced under a new administration headed by President Harmond. But Harmond may be gunning for more than the Senator’s reputation. He may be out for all the bloodcogs—and it’s up to Julian to find out.
For Ian Mallory, life as he knew it ended the day his wife was murdered, in an attack that sent him into a coma. Three years later, he’s woken up, with the bullet still lodged inside his brain. Any attempt to remove it will kill him, but that isn’t all: because of the bullet, he feels emotions several hours after they occur. An affliction that may be a gift—at least in the eyes of the NSA.
Agent Sisco-Castiglioni—Sisco for short—is responsible for protecting the President… which doesn’t necessarily mean he’s on the President’s side. Nor are his colleagues necessarily on his. When an ill-advised business deal threatens to embarrass the country’s leader, Sisco is called in to take drastic action. But what should have happened behind closed doors is witnessed from a window—and the chase is on to prevent embarrassment turning into national scandal… In Part 1 of this episode, the question is: Is it possible to get away with murder?
ContrapasoMadrid, winter of 1956. Franco’s fascist dictatorship controls the press and maintains the fiction of an idyllic nation. Faced with the Regime’s attempts to cover up the country’s most sordid crimes, two journalists from the crime beat, the jaded veteran Emilio Sanz and the young and intrepid Léon Lenoir, seek to reveal the truth. Confronted by a wave of unexplained murders, the duo sets out to uncover the dark secret connecting them, buried in a cruel past. Brilliantly written and illustrated by Teresa Valero, Sanz and Lenoir’s investigation plunges us headfirst into an era and society as dark and as violent as it is full of hope. A bracing journalistic thriller revealing the lengths the Francoist regime was willing to go to in its attempts to stifle any form of dissent.
The year is 1998. In the merciless world of the stock exchange, Alexandre, a brilliant young trader, finds himself caught in the middle of a game of scheming and manipulation. An employee of the BGCI, he is duped into covering up several risky transactions by his colleague and so-called friend. The losses begin to snowball, becoming ever harder to hide. Facing an audit and with a journalist hovering around, Alexandre’s fall from grace takes a deadly turn. This first volume brings us forward 12 years in the future, when Christopher Dantes, a businessman as rich as he is mysterious, makes his first public appearance at the Millennium Financial Ball, coming face to face with the people involved in the plot of that sordid drama of the past.
Rome, 145 CE: Cassio, a prominent lawyer who once saved the Emperor’s life, wakes in the night to noises. Four assassins have entered his villa and overpowered his formidable slave, the warrior Alva. He seems to know them, and knows why they have come… Ephesus, present day: archeologist Ornella Grazzi finds a ruin with a fresco of Cassio’s face. The papyrus scrolls inside tell the beginning of a story she has long suspected and been searching for clues to all her life: how Cassio survived his own assassination and came back from the dead for vengeance…
Bob Morane is back! This thrilling reboot from Lombard reintroduces the heroic soldier and all his classic associates in a new, present-day world. The whip-smart, physically skilled, and drop-dead gorgeous Morane has volunteered for a peacekeeping mission to Nigeria, where his conscience runs him afoul of his commanding officers and puts some very important people in his debt. Eventually, he finds himself organizing the largest humanitarian operation that has ever been undertaken in Africa. But there are many forces at play, some more shadowy than others—and some are extremely nefarious
Header image: The Roots of Chaos © Cava & Bartolomé Segui Nicolau / Dargaud
