Editing Spy fiction (section)

===Twentieth century===

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 (novel)|Kim]]'' (1901) by [[Rudyard Kipling]] concerns the [[British Empire|Anglo]]–[[Russian Empire|Russian]] "[[The Great Game|Great Game]]", which consisted of a [[geopolitics|geopolitical]] rivalry and strategic warfare for supremacy in [[Central Asia]], usually in [[Emirate of Afghanistan|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 (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 [[detective fiction|fictional detective]] [[Sherlock Holmes]], created by [[Arthur Conan Doyle]], served as a spy hunter for the [[Government of the United Kingdom|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 (story)|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 [[Aristocracy (class)|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 (author)|Erskine Childers]].{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1997|p=336}} ''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.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1997|p=336}} 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]].