The British Spy Novel: Styles in Treachery

Fiction about spies and spying is a fairly recent phenomenon at which British writers have so far been the most successful exponents. Although Dickens's 'A Tale of Two Cities' could qualify as spy fiction, it is really with 'The Riddle of the Sands', published by Erskine Childers (later to be shot by the British during the 1916 rising in Dublin), that the genre really begins. Since then it has been dominated by writers of varying quality such as John Buchan, Ian Fleming and, more recently, John Le Carre and Len Deighton. Others like E. Phillips Oppenheim and William le Queux were more concerned with the glamour of high life in such places as the Monte Carlo casinos and the femmes fatales who inhabited them, but wrote within the definitions of the genre.John Atkins, author of many literary biographies and the multi volume 'Sex in Literature' series, examines the subject matter of spy fiction and the authors who write it, many of whom have worked directly for the British Secret Service. Often life turns out to be more incredible than fiction and this is especially true of a form of literature which must be authentic to life and credible to the reader. This book should remain a standard guide to one of the most fascinating and popular categories of modern writing for many years.