Spy fiction
The
genre of
spy fiction — sometimes called
political thriller or
spy thriller or sometimes shortened simply to
Spy-fi — arose before
World War I at about the same time that the first modern
intelligence agencies were formed. Seldom has this literary field met with critical acclaim, although insightful, literate, and politically important works have been published in it.
At the same time, it has enjoyed great popular success. Readership waned only in the lull following the end of the
Cold War (the
Berlin Wall fell in November
1989). The
9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States reignited interest and have reversed that trend. Some pundits are referring to the current era as the Decade of the Spy and pointing to the renaissance in spy fiction and film as two of the indicators of this.
Early spy novels include
Rudyard Kipling's
Kim (
1901), which was based on
The Great Game (espionage and politics) between
Europe and
Asia and centered on
Afghanistan; and
Baroness Orczy's
The Scarlet Pimpernel (
1905), recounting the undercover exploits of an English
aristocrat's attempts to rescue French aristocrats during the
French Revolution.
Robert Erskine Childers's novel
The Riddle of the Sands (
1903) defined the spy novel for the pre-
First World War era.
The most widely read spy-fiction writer was
William Le Queux, whose ordinary prose has since relegated his works to used-book stores but who was Britain's highest-selling author during the preâ€"World War I years. The second biggest seller was
E. Phillips Oppenheim. Together they produced hundreds of books between
1900 and
1914, but the stories were formulaic and have been judged to be of little
literary merit.
During the
First World War, the pre-eminent author was
John Buchan, a skilled propagandist; his books were well-written portrayals of the war as a conflict between
civilization and
barbarism. His best-known works are the
Richard Hannay novels
Greenmantle and
The Thirty-Nine Steps (the title of which, but not the plot, was used for an
Alfred Hitchcock film.) Buchan's novels are still published.
The inter-war period's pulp spy fiction mostly concerned battling
Bolsheviks.
The strength and versatility of the form became evident in the period between the two wars and flowered during World War II. For the first time, novels written by retired intelligence officers such as
W. Somerset Maugham, who accurately portrayed spying in the First World War in
Ashenden, appeared.
Compton Mackenzie, another former British intelligence agent, wrote the first successful spy satire.
Eric Ambler wrote of ordinary people caught up in espionage in
Epitaph for a Spy (
1938),
The Mask of Dimitrios (
A Coffin for Dimitrios in the United States) (
1939), and
Journey into Fear (
1940). Ambler was notable (and shocking to some) for bringing a left-wing perspective to a genre previously featuring right-wing, Establishment attitudes.
In
1939, Glasgow-born author
Helen MacInnes's first espionage novel,
Above Suspicion, was published in Britain (
1941 in the U.S.A.), beginning a 45-year, highly successful career in which critics praised her for her literate, fast-paced, intricately plotted suspense novels set against contemporary history.
Above Suspicion was made into a popular
movie. Some of her other famous titles include
Assignment in Britanny (
1942),
Decision at Delphi (
1961), and
Ride a Pale Horse (
1984).
In
1940, British writer
Manning Coles brought out
Drink to Yesterday, the first of his acclaimed
Thomas Elphinstone Hambledon novels. It was a grim story set in World War I, while his next books, which occurred in
Nazi Germany or in World War II
England, had a lighter tone despite the graveness of the events depicted. After the war, Hambledon's books grew formulaic, and critical interest waned.
The
Cold War that followed hard upon
World War II was a great impetus to the genre.
Graham Greene drew on his experience with
British Intelligence to create a number of
left-wing,
anti-imperialist spy novels, including
The Quiet American (
1952), set in
southeast Asia,
A Burnt-out Case (
1961), about the
Belgian Congo,
The Comedians (
1966), set in
Haiti,
The Honorary Consul (
1973), in the Argentine town of Corrientes, near the
Paraguay border, and
The Human Factor (
1978), about spies in
London. His most popular novel was
Our Man in Havana (
1959), a seriocomedy about British intelligence bumbling in pre-
Castro Cuba.
An early Cold War phenomenon was
Ian Fleming's
James Bond --
007. Bond is the most famous fictional spy. Although the author had served in British Naval Intelligence during the war, the world of intelligence he described in the Bond books was highly unrealistic.
Despite Fleming's enormous commercial success, other authors quickly developed heroes with anti-Bond traits. Notable examples are
John le Carré and
Len Deighton, who modeled their novels on those
1930s authors who were dubious about the morality of espionage.
Frederick Forsyth (
The Day of the Jackal) and
Ken Follett (
Eye of the Needle) took a more journalistic approach and were praised for their dramatic use of historic events.
Adam Hall, one of the pseudonyms of Trevor Dudley-Smith, created a popular series about British spy
Quiller, beginning with
The Berlin Memorandum (published in the United States as
The Quiller Memorandum), which took a different tack; it was both literary and highly focused on tradecraft.
During this era, American authors for the first time rose to sufficient prominence to break British dominance of the genre. In
1960 Donald Hamilton published
Death of a Citizen and
The Wrecking Crew, the debut novels in his long-running series featuring the grim
counterspy/
assassin Matt Helm. The books inspired a series of popular
movies starring
Dean Martin as a somewhat comedic Matt Helm.
Robert Ludlum's first book,
The Scarlatti Inheritance (
1971), sold modestly in hardcover but was a
bestseller in
paperback, launching Ludlum. Generally considered the inventor of the modern spy thriller, Ludlum has been criticized, praised, and widely imitated ever since.
Tom Clancy's first novel,
The Hunt for Red October (
1984), was a publishing sensation much like today's
DaVinci Code, and also made into a highly successful movie. Clancy is acknowledged as the creator of the spy-techno thriller.
The
1960s saw an explosion of
spy films, many based on works of
literature. These covered a wide range from the extremely fantastical James Bond films to the grainy realism of
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (based on the Le Carre book) and the cool commercialism of
The Quiller Memorandum (based on the Adam Hall book).
Spies also were depicted on
television, including James Bond in
1954 in an episode of
Climax! based on Fleming's
Casino Royale. Several series aired in the 1960s. Spies were parodied in
Get Smart. Then in the late
1970s and into the
1980s,
The Sandbaggers brought a gritty bureaucratic view of espionage operations to the small screen.
In the 1970s and 1980s a former CIA employee,
Charles McCarry, wrote a half-dozen highly regarded novels such as
The Tears of Autumn that were noticeable for their mastery of espionage tradecraft as well as their literary qualities.
As the Cold War closed, literary novelist
Norman Mailer's abiding preoccupation with U.S. espionage inspired him to write
Harlot's Ghost, a sprawling 1,300-page work published in
1991, the year that the
Soviet Union dissolved.
With the fall of the
Iron Curtain, the once-
Communist East reeled, desperately in need of financial aid from the West as it struggled to adopt democracy. The Soviet Union was gone, and
Russia was not easily believable as the arch
enemy in contemporary spy tales. Adding to the problem, the very existence of the
CIA was in question -- the
U.S. Congress seriously discussed disbanding it. Interest in espionage fiction plummeted. Deciding the game was over,
The New York Times abandoned its long-running column that reviewed spy thrillers. The final blow came in
1998 when both Le Carre and Forsyth declared the field dead and went off to write other books.
Still, publishers continued to bring out the new work of those authors who had been highly popular during the Cold War, hoping that most of their readership would remain loyal. That proved to be true. Besides the Cold War writers mentioned earlier, those who published successfully during this low point included
Nelson DeMille,
W.E.B. Griffin, and
David Morrell.
At the same time,
editors were naturally leery of gambling on brand-new authors. Only a handful of novelists ultimately were deemed to have written work strong or original enough to be published in
hardcover. Among those were
Joseph Finder,
Moscow Club (
1995),
Gayle Lynds,
Masquerade, (
1996), and
Daniel Silva,
The Unlikely Spy (1996). They were rarities, whose best-selling espionage stories about the new
post-Cold War world helped to keep the form alive.
Finally, the political tide turned again. The tragic events of
9/11 and the aftermath of continued
terrorist attacks reawakened readers' hunger for information about the world at large. Fiction has always been a favored lens through which readers not only entertained but educated themselves. Quickly a demand for spy thrillers arose, a demand that has only grown, reflecting the widespread attention paid by the public to real-life intelligence matters not only in their own country but internationally.
Le Carre and Forsyth returned to the field with new books. Editors actively sought out espionage novels and continue to do so. Today a host of new writers across
Europe and the
United States publish in the field. In the United States, the
New York Times bestseller list is often dominated by thrillers. Finally, in
2004, the first international organization for professional thriller authors was formed Spyland -- is scheduled to open near
Lyons, France.
There have been so many spy movies recently that they seem to be taking over theaters while producing steady streams of profit and popular interest --
Syriana,
The Constant Gardener (based on a recent Le Carre novel),
Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and
Munich, to name a few.
There have been many new TV espionage series. Some, like
Alias and
24, have become almost iconic.
Spy fiction has also taken off in a brand-new direction with the arrival of digital gaming. Players can become a spy and infiltrate enemy territory without being detected. The
Metal Gear (most specifically the third installment
Metal Gear Solid) series pioneered the concept of infiltration and secrecy in computer gaming (as opposed to the standard
first-person shooter genre), followed by games like
Syphon Filter and
Splinter Cell. These games feature complex conspiracy/espionage storylines and cinematic presentation that rival most espionage-based motion pictures.
At fan gatherings, writers' conferences, publishers' meetings, and in the
Intelligence Community itself memories of the field's near death after the Cold War are painfully fresh. But since
terrorism and world unrest are not expected to end soon, the need for intelligence gathering,
counterespionage, and
counter-terrorism are not expected to end soon either. The future of the spy thriller is bright.
* Aronoff, Myron J.
The Spy Novels of John Le Carré: Balancing Ethics and Politics (1999).
* Cawelti, John G.
The Spy Story (1987)
* Priestman, Martin, ed.
The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction (2003).
*
Eric Ambler*
Raymond Benson*
John Buchan*
John le Carré*
James Hadley Chase*
Robert Erskine Childers*
Tom Clancy*
Manning Coles*
Desmond Cory*
Len Deighton*
Paul Eddy*
Joseph Finder*
Ian Fleming*
Vince Flynn*
Ken Follett*
Frederick Forsyth*
John Gardner*
Michael Gilbert*
Graham Greene*
Jan Guillou*
Adam Hall*
Donald Hamilton*
Robert Harris*
Raelynn Hillhouse*
Anthony Horowitz*
Robert Ludlum*
Gayle Lynds*
Helen MacInnes*
Ian Mackintosh*
Norman Mailer*
Somerset Maugham*
Charles McCarry*
Andy McNab*
David Morrell*
James Munro*
Manning O'Brine*
E. Phillips Oppenheim*
Baroness Orczy*
William le Queux*
Daniel Silva*
Desmond Skirrow*
Ross Thomas*
Dennis Wheatley*
Espionage*
Spy-Fi*
Spy film*
List of fictional secret agents*
Thriller fiction*
Thriller Film*
List of thriller authors*
International Thriller Writers, Inc. The official website for the first international organization for professional thriller authors.
*
Spyland The official website for the world's first espionage theme park, Spyland, scheduled to open in 2007.
