Espionage fiction

Our Man in Havana and plenty more Greene

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Alan Furst

"For a while you wondered whether the fools were pretending to be fools as some kind of deception, or whether there was a real efficient service somewhere else.

Later in my fiction, I invented one.

But alas the reality was the mediocrity. Ex-colonial policemen mingling with failed academics, failed lawyers, failed missionaries and failed debutantes gave our canteen the amorphous quality of an Old School outing on the Orient express. Everyone seemed to smell of failure."

It was recently revealed that back in the 1970s - at the height of the obsession with traitors - MI5 trained a specially bred group of gerbils to detect spies. Gerbils have a very acute sense of smell and they were used in interrogations to tell whether the suspects were releasing adrenaline - because that would show they were under stress and lying.

Then they tried the gerbils to see if they could detect terrorists who were about to carry a bomb onto a plane. But the gerbils got confused because they couldn't tell the difference between the terrorists and ordinary people who were frightened of flying who were also pumping out adrenaline in their sweat.

So the gerbils failed as well.

Perhaps MI5 shouldn't have given up so easily. Maybe what we need is a better class of gerbil to find out the truth? But maybe we have them already - they're called journalists.
Adam Curtis' blog on the MI6 is aesthetic enough.

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bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460

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Bumping for this. Ideally interested in an East German setting, something involving STASI and/or KGB.Think the literature version of The Lives of Others.

Not quite East Germany (it's there, but not for long), but Le Carre's "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" should be right up your alley.

Cheers, have heard about this, will check it out. God I am so fascinated by East Germany and I don't even know why.

Heinlein's Puppet Masters (yes it's sci-fi, it's also a spy novel; it's also the one must-read Heinlein novel even if you hate sci-fi).
Le Carre's Spy Who Came In from the Cold (this is a foundational text for the genre).
Fleming's Goldfinger, endorsed by Anthony Burgess and George MacDonald Fraser (also a foundational text).
Kim Philby's autobiography -- nonfiction, but you'll swear it's one of the most gripping spy novels ever published. Oh by the way, the Soviet Union almost took over our most important European ally without firing a shot. This actually happened.
I forget the name but Harlan Ellison has a superspy parody story in which Agent Santa Claus must kill Ronald Reagan.

Simenon

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I wouldn't put LeCarre in the same camp as Fleming. LeCarre has a lot of deep human element stuff woven into his work, and it's not at all sexy spy stuff. You should read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or The Spy Who Came in from the Cold to get a taste of his work. If you are into cold war era spy stuff LeCarre is essential reading.

Bumping for this. One of, if not the greatest spy novel ever written

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let's keep the recommendations coming

Len Deighton, but he's british
youtube.com/watch?v=i2Jw6_Xgszk

Gravitiy's Rainbow (although not the 60's)

is that a very espionage heavy work?

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yes, although much more broad and postmodern than your typical espionage genre fiction

that makes it sound better

Don DeLillo's Libra

Now we're getting somewhere. Sounds very interesting

Borges' Death and The Compass

Kennedy gets shot

By whom? that is the question it was dumbledore wasn't it

more reccs like this?