Spy fiction is a type of writing that focuses on stories about spies and secret missions. It began in the early 1900s, influenced by conflicts and secret activities between powerful countries and the creation of modern intelligence groups. The genre became more popular during the rise of communism and fascism before World War II, continued to grow during the Cold War, and gained new attention because of threats like rogue states, international crime groups, terrorist organizations, piracy, and technological sabotage. Spy fiction shares themes with adventure stories, such as The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) and The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905), as well as thrillers, like those written by Edgar Wallace, and politico-military thrillers, such as The Schirmer Inheritance (1953) and The Quiet American (1955).
History
Commentator William Bendler noted that "Chapter 2 of the Hebrew Bible's Book of Joshua might count as the first Spy Story in world literature. (…) Three thousand years before James Bond seduced Pussy Galore and turned her into his ally against Goldfinger, the spies sent by General Joshua into the city of Jericho did much the same with Rahab the Harlot."
Spy fiction as a genre started to emerge during the 19th Century. Early examples of the espionage novel are The Spy (1821) and The Bravo (1831), by American novelist James Fenimore Cooper. The Bravo attacks European anti-republicanism by depicting Venice as a city-state where a ruthless oligarchy wears the mask of the "serene republic."
In nineteenth-century France, the Dreyfus Affair (1894–99) contributed much to public interest in espionage. For some twelve years (ca. 1894–1906), the Affair, which involved elements of international espionage, treason, and antisemitism, dominated French politics. The details were reported by the world press: an Imperial German penetration agent betraying to Germany the secrets of the General Staff of the French Army; the French counter-intelligence riposte of sending a charwoman to rifle the trash in the German Embassy in Paris, were news that inspired successful spy fiction.
At least two Sherlock Holmes stories have clear espionage themes. In The Adventure of the Naval Treaty, Holmes recovers the text of a secret Naval Treaty between Britain and Italy, stolen by a daring spy. In His Last Bow, Holmes himself acts as a double agent, providing Germany with a lot of false information on the eve of WWI.
The major themes of a spy in the lead-up to the First World War were the continuing rivalry between the European colonial powers for dominance in Asia, the growing threat of conflict in Europe, the domestic threat of revolutionaries and anarchists, and historical romance.
Kim (1901) by Rudyard Kipling concerns the Anglo–Russian "Great Game," which consisted of a geopolitical rivalry and strategic warfare for supremacy in Central Asia, usually in Afghanistan. The Secret Agent (1907) by Joseph Conrad examines the psychology and ideology motivating the socially marginal men and women of a revolutionary cell. A diplomat from an unnamed (but clearly Russian) embassy forces a double-agent, Verloc, to organise a failed attempt to bomb the Greenwich Observatory in the hope that the revolutionaries will be blamed. Conrad's next novel, Under Western Eyes (1911), follows a reluctant spy sent by the Russian Empire to infiltrate a group of revolutionaries based in Geneva. G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) is a metaphysical thriller ostensibly based on the infiltration of an anarchist organisation by detectives, but the story is actually a vehicle for exploring society's power structures and the nature of suffering.
The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by Arthur Conan Doyle, served as a spy hunter for the British government in the stories The Adventure of the Second Stain (1904), and The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans (1912). In His Last Bow (1917), he served Crown and country as a double agent, transmitting false intelligence to Imperial Germany on the eve of the Great War.
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905) by Baroness Orczy chronicled an English aristocrat's derring-do in rescuing French aristocrats from the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution (1789–99).
But the term "spy novel" was defined by The Riddle of the Sands (1903) by Irish author Erskine Childers. The Riddle of the Sands described a British yachtsman and his friend cruising off the North Sea coast of Germany who turned amateur spies when they discover a secret German plan to invade Britain. Its success created a market for the invasion literature subgenre, which was flooded by imitators. William Le Queux and E. Phillips Oppenheim became the most widely read and most successful British writers of spy fiction, especially of invasion literature. Their prosaic style and formulaic stories, produced voluminously from 1900 to 1914, proved of low literary merit.
During the War, John Buchan became the pre-eminent British spy novelist. His well-written stories portray the Great War as a "clash of civilisations" between Western civilization and barbarism. His notable novels are The Thirty-nine Steps (1915), Greenmantle (1916) and sequels, all featuring the heroic Scotsman Richard Hannay. In France Gaston Leroux published the spy thriller Rouletabille chez Krupp (1917), in which a detective, Joseph Rouletabille, engages in espionage.
After the Russian Revolution (1917), the quality of spy fiction declined, perhaps because the Bolshevik enemy won the Russian Civil War (1917–23). Thus, the inter-war spy story usually concerns combating the Red Menace, which was perceived as another "clash of civilizations."
Spy fiction was dominated by British authors during this period, initially former intelligence officers and agents writing from inside the trade. Examples include Ashenden: Or the British Agent (1928) by W. Somerset Maugham, which accurately portrays spying in the First World War, and The Mystery of Tunnel 51 (1928) by Alexander Wilson whose novels convey an uncanny portrait of the first head of the Secret Intelligence Service, Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the original 'C'.
In the book Literary Agents (1987), Anthony Masters wrote: "Ashenden's adventures come nearest to the real-life experiences of his creator." John Le Carré described Ashenden stories as a major influence on his novels as praised Maugham as "the first person to write anything about espionage in a mood of disenchantment and almost prosaic reality."
At a more popular level, Leslie Charteris' popular and long-running Saint series began, featuring Simon Templar, with Meet the Tiger (1928). Water on the Brain (1933) by former intelligence officer Compton Mackenzie was the first successful spy novel satire. Prolific author Dennis Wheatley also wrote his first spy novel, The Eunuch of Stamboul (1935) during this period.
In the sham state of Manchukuo, spies often featured in stories published in its
Insider spy fiction
Many writers of spy stories have worked as intelligence officers for British groups like MI5 or MI6, or American groups like the OSS or its later group, the CIA. Spy fiction written by people who worked in intelligence is especially real and accurate. It often overlaps with real-life stories and records about secret service work.
The first spy stories written by former intelligence officers appeared after World War I. These stories were based on the experiences of people like W. Somerset Maugham, Alexander Wilson, and Compton Mackenzie. This tradition continued during World War II with authors such as Helen MacInnes and Manning Coles.
Well-known British authors from the Cold War and later years include Ian Fleming, John le Carré, Graham Greene, Brian Cleeve, Ian Mackintosh, Kenneth Benton, Bryan Forbes, Andy McNab, and Chris Ryan. American authors include Charles McCarry, William F. Buckley Jr., W. E. B. Griffin, and David Hagberg.
After the events of September 11, 2001, many spy novels were written by people who worked in intelligence. At the CIA, the number of book drafts sent for review before publication doubled between 1998 and 2005. American examples include Barry Eisler’s A Clean Kill in Tokyo (2002); Charles Gillen’s Saigon Station (2003); R. J. Hillhouse’s Rift Zone (2004); Gene Coyle’s The Dream Merchant of Lisbon (2004) and No Game For Amateurs (2009); Thomas F. Murphy’s Edge of Allegiance (2005); Mike Ramsdell’s A Train to Potevka (2005); T. H. E. Hill’s Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary (2008); Duane Evans’s North from Calcutta (2009); Jason Matthews’s Red Sparrow (2013); and T. L. Williams’s Zero Day: China's Cyber Wars (2017).
British examples include The Code Snatch (2001) by Alan Stripp, who worked as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park; At Risk (2004), Secret Asset (2006), Illegal Action (2007), and Dead Line (2008) by Dame Stella Rimington, who led MI5 from 1992 to 1996; and Matthew Dunn’s Spycatcher (2011) and its follow-up books.
Spy television and cinema
Many spy stories from the 1960s were made into movies. These included the imaginative James Bond series, the realistic film The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), and the mix of realism and drama in The Quiller Memorandum (1966). While the books by Hamilton about Matt Helm were serious and well-written, their movie versions were more like silly, childish stories. This trend spread across Europe in the 1960s and became known as the Eurospy genre.
In the 2000s, English-language spy films included The Bourne Identity (2002), Mission: Impossible (1996), Munich (2005), Syriana (2005), and The Constant Gardener (2005).
Some spy movies are funny. Examples include SPYS (1974), Spies Like Us (1985), and the Austin Powers* series starring Mike Myers.
A 1954 version of Casino Royale appeared on TV as part of the Climax! series, featuring a character named Jimmy Bond. TV spy shows varied in tone, from the serious Danger Man (1960–1968) to the sarcastic The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964–1968) and the lighthearted I Spy (1965–1968). Over time, these shows became exaggerated, similar to older spy stories from before World War I, until they turned into jokes, like Get Smart (1965–1970).
In 1973, a book titled Seventeen Moments of Spring (1968) was adapted into a TV mini-series about a Soviet spy named Maksim Isaev, who worked in Nazi Germany during wartime as Max Otto von Stierlitz. His mission was to stop Nazi Germany from making peace with America without involving the USSR. Another TV show, TASS Is Authorized to Declare…, was also based on his work.
By the late 1970s, the spy show The Sandbaggers (1978–1980) focused on the real challenges and rules of espionage.
In the 1980s, American TV had spy shows like Airwolf (1984–1987) and MacGyver (1985–1992). These shows reflected public distrust of the government after events like the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War. The heroes in these shows were not government employees. For example, MacGyver later worked for a private, non-profit organization, while Airwolf characters worked as independent adventurers. Both shows included intelligence agencies, but the agents could sometimes be enemies or allies to the main characters.
Spy shows from the late 1990s to the early 2010s included La Femme Nikita (1997–2001), Alias (2001–2006), 24 (2001–2010, 2014), Spooks (UK, released as MI-5 in the US and Canada) (2002–2011), The Secret Show (UK, 2006–2011), Chuck (2007–2012), Archer (2009–2023), Burn Notice (2007–2013), Covert Affairs (2010–2014), Homeland (2011–2020), The Americans (2013–2018), and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013–2020).
In 2015, a German TV series called Deutschland 83 followed a 24-year-old man from East Germany who was sent to the West as an undercover spy for the HVA, the foreign intelligence branch of the Stasi.
For children and adolescents
Spy thrillers are found in many forms of media and help introduce young readers to topics like lying and secret missions at an early age. These stories include action-adventure books, such as Chris Ryan's Alpha Force series, historical spy stories by Y. S. Lee, and series aimed at girls, like Ally Carter's Gallagher Girls series, which begins with I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You.
Popular examples include the movie Agent Cody Banks, the adventure novels Alex Rider by Anthony Horowitz, and the CHERUB series by Robert Muchamore. Ben Allsop, a young English author, also writes spy fiction, with books like Sharp and The Perfect Kill.
Other writers who create spy stories for young readers include A. J. Butcher, Joe Craig, Charlie Higson, Andy McNab, and Francine Pascal.
Spy-themed movies for younger audiences include the Spy Kids films and The Spy Next Door. Television shows in this category include Phineas and Ferb, which features a subplot about Perry the Platypus working to stop villains' plans in a specific area. Another show, Codename: Kids Next Door on Cartoon Network, focuses on a group of child spies and soldiers who fight adult and teenage villains who represent things children dislike, such as homework, being grounded, or going to the dentist. Though not officially government-sponsored, the group claims to act like an intelligence agency. Another example is Kim Possible from Disney, which follows a young hero who fights villains similar to James Bond and stops the plans of the show's main antagonist, Dr. Drakken.
Video games, tabletop roleplaying games and theme parks
In modern video games, players can pretend to be spies, as seen in games like Team Fortress 2 and the Metal Gear series, especially in the third game, Metal Gear Solid. These games differ from others, such as Syphon Filter and Splinter Cell, which are third-person shooters. These spy-themed games often have detailed stories and movie-like scenes. Games like No One Lives Forever and its sequel, No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way, mix spy themes with 1960s-style design. Evil Genius, a real-time strategy game from the same time period as No One Lives Forever, lets players play as the villain in a setting inspired by spy thriller stories, like those featuring James Bond.
The Deus Ex series, including Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, also uses spy fiction. In these games, the main character, Adam Jensen, often uses spy skills and stealth to gather important information for clients and allies.
Top Secret, published by TSR, Inc. in 1980, is a modern spy-themed tabletop role-playing game. James Bond 007: Role-Playing In Her Majesty's Secret Service, created by Victory Games in 1983, is a tabletop game based on Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Activision released Spycraft: The Great Game in 1996. This game worked with former CIA director William Colby and former KGB officer Oleg Kalugin, who appear in the game as themselves.
Namco Bandai’s Time Crisis series, which uses light guns, follows a fictional international intelligence group called the VSSE (Vital Situation, Swift Elimination). These agents are allowed to use deadly force to stop terrorists and dangerous villains, similar to the stories in Mission: Impossible and James Bond movies.
In 2012, the Spyland espionage-themed amusement park opened in the Gran Scala pleasure dome in Zaragoza province, Spain.