When I was little, I wanted to be a spy.

I also want to be “the lady who worked at the Library”, so I think I’m doing a pretty good job on the life goals, all around.

But back to the main point–I wanted to be a spy.  I adored watching re-runs of Get Smart on tv, to the point where I may have written Maxwell Smart a fan letter.  Although I did realize, at some point, that I wasn’t going to be able to work for Control, I really never outgrew a love for spy fiction.  Some of my favorite Sherlock Holmes stories were the ones where we got to meet “international agents” like Eduardo Lucas, who managed to be an internationally recognized tenor and a super-spy.

In college, I found the James Bond novels, and found them…sexist and ridiculous, to be honest…but amidst all the feeding people to sharks and men who grew fur during the full moon, Ian Fleming managed to create a world where being a spy was a high-paying, classy-as-all-getout job, complete with trips on the Orient Express, and classic whiskey, and designer weaponry.   This was a Cold War that was fought civilly–with barbed discourse and knives concealed in tuxedo jackets, rather than atomic bombs and mass murder in the developing world.

On the other end of the proverbial spectrum, you had the books of John Le Carre.  LeCarre’s books showed a much more realistic, seedier, and honest view of spywork–a world of betrayal and cynicism and crushing bureaucracy (anyone who remembers the archivists from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy will know what I mean).  While James Bond could saunter around with his martinis, Smiley and his crew were doing the real work, averting disaster, and suffering the very real consequences.

But then the Cold War ended.  And the spy novel got really quite boring.  I read a few books about industrial espionage, but, after you’ve flown on a jet with Bond, or slunk through the shadows with Smiley, or tried to talk in the cone of silence, rifling a filing cabinet just isn’t that stirring, and the high visibility violence  of the War on Terror took any pleasure out of reading about spies in the modern world for me.  These spies weren’t upholding civilization–they were witnessing its demise.  Sure, spy novels were published, but they were bleak and depressing and clearly suffering the same heartbreak over the lack of post-Cold War peace and harmony that I, as a reader, felt (read some of John LeCarre’s later works to see what I mean).

It was around this point that we saw the rise of the historical spy novel, with classics like Robert Harris’ Enigma, which focused on the code-breakers at Bletchley Park during the Second World War, and Alan Furst’s novels about spies across Eastern Europe during the second half of the twentieth century.  In these books, it was clear that the tension and the dingy glamor of the Cold War still hadn’t worn off.  Moreover, in this nostalgia, it was very easy to see a longing for a time where things were black and white, and it was relatively easy to know your allies from your enemies.  Time moved a little more slowly, and information flowed at a speed that the brain could take in.  These novels celebrated the social aspect of the spy novel–it boiled complex, terrifying, real-world scenarios into manageable sizes, and provided us with a few heroes and heroines who could set the world to right through their wits and courage.  For all the nifty gadgets and smarmy phrases of our favorite spies, the goal of each novel was always to keep the world familiar, and therefore, safe.

And now, with the world getting bigger and scarier and more confusing seemingly hour by hour, the spy novel is making a comeback, playing not only on our need to believe that a few intrepid humans can make things right, but also feeding our increasing hunger for technology…wouldn’t Maxwell Smart have a field day with an iPhone?!

So here are a few suggestions for some terrific new books on conspiracy theories, undercover investigations and international intrigue, perhaps to take your mind off…conspiracy theories about covert agents and undercover investigations and international intrigue.  I can guarantee you these suggestions have much, much better plots that then ones on the news….

Slow Horses: Mick Herron’s Jackson Lamb series (also known as the Slough House series) is one of my favorite spy series of all time, and with the recent release of the fourth book, things are only looking up.  The ‘horses’ of the title are all MI-5 agents who have failed.  Colossally failed.  But rather than being booted from the organization, they are moved to Slough House, and left to shred paper, troll the internet, and generally waste away in obscurity.  But the folks at Slough House aren’t about to go quietly into that good night, and keep finding cases that no one else wants to take–or knows how to take–or knows about at all.  Herron has a wicked sense of humor, and writes stories that are linguistically surprising, intricately plotted, and just plain fun.  Plus, I’m in love with River Cartwright.  There.  I said it.

Jack of Spies: David Downing’s Jack McColl novels are historic spy fictions set around and after the First World War.  He channels some of the great writers of First World War spycraft, like Somerset Maugham, to create a world that is big and complex and fragile, and where alliances are made–and broken– in heartbeats.   These books are well-thought out and feature phenomenal period detail, not the least of which is the real threats that menace our hero McColl from every side–from Irish revolutionaries to Chinese intelligence agents, to his own lover, McColl’s world is full of the same complexities as our own, but everyone is better dressed.  And he is just the man to try and put it to rights.

The Journeyman Tailor: I think we’ve mentioned this book before, under a different category, but it deserves mention here, again.  Gerald Seymour, who also wrote Harry’s Game, does a magnificent job here showing the very real, gritty, and often terribly mundane world of British spies who were working to bring down the IRA during the height of its bombing campaigns.  When a new recruit is brought in to infiltrate the IRA in the mountains of Northern Ireland, he quickly learns that this is not an assignment where men earn glory, nor is it s a place capable of being saved, no matter how much he or his eccentric colleague might try. It is also a deeply complex tale about those IRA fighters, their families, and their communities, and takes a very hard look at the effects of this war on both sides, making it one that is tense, deeply unsettling, and haunting.