Editing Spy fiction (section)

===Cold War===
====Early====
The metamorphosis of the Second World War (1939–45) into the Soviet–American [[Cold War]] (1945–91) gave new impetus to spy novelists. ''[[Atomsk (novel)|Atomsk]]'' by [[Paul Linebarger]] (later known as [[Cordwainer Smith]]), written in 1948 and published in 1949, appears to be the first espionage novel of the dawning conflict.{{citation needed|date=January 2021}}

The "secret world" of espionage allowed a situation when writers could project anything they wanted onto the "secret world". The author Bruce Page complained in his 1969 book ''The Philby Conspiracy'': <blockquote>"The trouble is that a man can hold almost any theory he cares to about the secret world, and defend it against large quantities of hostile evidence by the simple expedient of retreating behind further and further screens of postulated inward mystery. Secret services have in common with Freemasons and ''mafiosi'' that they inhabit an intellectual twilight-a kind of ambiguous gloom in which it is hard to distinguish with certainty between the menacing and the merely ludicrous. In such circumstances the human affinity for myth and legend easily gets out of control".{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=500}}</blockquote> This inability to know for certain about what is going on in the "secret world" of intelligence-gathering affected both non-fiction and fiction books about espionage. The Cold War and the struggle between Soviet intelligence-known as the KGB from 1954 onward-vs. the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] and MI6 made the subject of espionage a popular one for novelists to write about.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=337}} Most of the spy novels of the Cold War were really action thrillers with little resemblance to the actual work of spies.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=337}} The writer [[Malcolm Muggeridge]] who had worked as a spy in World War Two commented that thriller writers in the Cold War took to writing about espionage "as easily as the mentally unstable become psychiatrists or the impotent pornographers".{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=337}} The city that was considered to be the "capital of the Cold War" was Berlin, owing to its post-war status as the city was divided between the two German states while Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States all had occupations zones in Berlin.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=60}} As a result, Berlin was a beehive of espionage during the Cold War with the city full of American, British, East German, French, Soviet and West German spies; it was estimated that there was an average of about 8,000 spies in Berlin at any given moment during the Cold War.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=60}} Because Berlin was a center of espionage, the city was frequently a setting for spy novels and films.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=61}} Furthermore, the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 made the wall into a symbol of Communist tyranny, which further increased the attraction for Western writers of setting a Cold War spy novel in Berlin. Perhaps the most memorable story set in Berlin was ''The Spy Who Came In From The Cold'' which in both the novel and the film ended with disillusioned British spy Alec Leamas and his lover, the naïve young woman Liz Gold being shot down while trying to cross the Berlin Wall from East Berlin into West Berlin.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=61}}

=====British=====
With ''Secret Ministry'' (1951), [[Desmond Cory]] introduced [[Johnny Fedora]], the secret agent with a [[Licence to kill (concept)|licence to kill]], the government-sanctioned [[Assassination|assassin]]. [[Ian Fleming]], a former member of naval intelligence, followed swiftly with the glamorous [[James Bond]], secret agent 007 of the British Secret Service, a mixture of counter-intelligence officer, assassin and playboy. Perhaps the most famous fictional spy, Bond was introduced in ''[[Casino Royale (novel)|Casino Royale]]'' (1953). After Fleming's death the franchise continued under other British and American authors, including [[Kingsley Amis]], [[Christopher Wood (writer)|Christopher Wood]], [[John Gardner (British writer)|John Gardner]], [[Raymond Benson]], [[Sebastian Faulks]], [[Jeffery Deaver]], [[William Boyd (writer)|William Boyd]] and [[Anthony Horowitz]]. The Bond novels, which were extremely popular in the 1950s, inspired an even more popular series of films starting in 1962. The success of the Bond novels and films has greatly influenced popular images of the work of spies even though the character of Bond is more of an assassin than a spy.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=381}}

Despite the commercial success of Fleming's extravagant novels, [[John le Carré]], himself a former spy, created [[anti-hero]]ic protagonists who struggled with the ethical issues involved in espionage and sometimes resorted to immoral tactics. Le Carré depicted spies as living a morally grey world having to constantly make morally dubious decisions in an essentially amoral struggle where lies, paranoia and betrayal are the norm for both sides.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=332}} In le Carré best known novel, ''The Spy Who Came In From The Cold'' (1963), the hero Alec Leamas views himself as serving in "...a war fought on a tiny scale, at close range" and complained that he has seen too many "people cheated and misled, whole lives thrown away, people shot and in prison, whole groups and classes of men written off for nothing".{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=332}} Le Carré's middle-class hero [[George Smiley]] is a middle-aged spy burdened with an unfaithful, upper-class wife who publicly [[Cuckoldry|cuckolds]] him for sport.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=230}} The American scholars Norman Polmar and Thomas Allen described Smiley as the fictional spy most likely to be successful as a real spy, citing le Carré's description of him in ''A Murder of Quality'': <blockquote>"Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colorful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley has lived and worked for years among his country's enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim, he learns to love the crowds who pass him in the street without a glance; he clings to them for his anonymity and his safety. His fear makes him servile—he could embrace the shoppers who jostle him in their impatience and force him from the pavement. He could adore the officials, the police, the bus conductors, for the terse indifference of their attitudes.<br />But this fear, this servility, this dependence had developed in Smiley a perception for the colour of human beings: a swift, feminine sensitivity to their characters and motives. He knew mankind as a huntsman knows his cover, as a fox the woods. For a spy must hunt while he is hunted, and the crowd is his estate. He could collect their gestures, record the interplay of glance and movement, as a huntsman can record the twisted bracken and broken twig, or as a fox detects the signs of danger".{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=229-230}}</blockquote>

Like Le Carré, former British Intelligence officer [[Graham Greene (writer)|Graham Greene]] also examined the [[morality]] of espionage in left-wing, anti-imperialist novels such as ''[[The Heart of the Matter]]'' (1948), set in [[Sierra Leone]], the [[seriocomedy|seriocomic]] ''[[Our Man in Havana]]'' (1959) occurring in Cuba under the regime of dictator [[Fulgencio Batista]] before his deposition in the [[Cuban Revolution]] (1953–59), and ''[[The Human Factor (novel)|The Human Factor]]'' (1978) about a MI6 agent's attempts to uncover a mole in [[apartheid]]-era [[South Africa]].{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=336}} Greene had worked as a MI6 agent in Freetown, an important British naval base during World War Two, searching for German spies who would radio information about the movements of ships to the ''Kriegsmarine'', experiences which inspired ''The Heart of the Matter''.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=242}} Greene's case officer during World War Two was Harold "Kim" Philby, who was later revealed in 1963 to be a long time Soviet spy, who had been recruited by Soviet intelligence in the early 1930s while he was an undergraduate at Cambridge.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=242}} Greene's best known spy novel ''The Quiet American'' (1955), set in 1952 Vietnam featured a thinly disguised version of the real American intelligence officer, Major General [[Edward Lansdale]] as the villain.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=336}} Greene had covered the Vietnam war in 1951-52 as a newspaper correspondent where he met Lansdale who appears in ''The Quiet American'' as Alden Pyle while the character of Thomas Fowler, a cynical, but goodhearted British journalist in Saigon was partly based on himself.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=243}}

MI6 was outraged by ''Our Man In Havana'' with its story of James Wormold, a British vacuum cleaner salesman in Cuba, recruited to work for MI6 who bamboozles his employers by selling them diagrams of vacuum cleaners, which he persuades MI6 are really diagrams of Soviet missiles.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=243}} MI6 pressed for Greene to be prosecuted for violating the Official Secrets Act, claiming that he revealed too much about MI6's methods in ''Our Man in Havana'', but it decided against charging Greene out of the fear that prosecuting him would suggest the unflattening picture of MI6 in ''Our Man in Havana'' was based on reality.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=337}} Greene's older brother, Herbert, a professional con-man had briefly worked as a spy for the Japanese in the 1930s before his employers realised that the "secrets" that he was selling them was merely information culled from the newspapers.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=243}} The bumbling vacuum cleaner salesman Wormold in ''Our Man in Havana'' seems to been inspired by Herbert Greene.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=243}} In ''The Human Factor'', Greene portrayed MI6 again in a highly unsympathetic light, depicting the [[Government of the United Kingdom|British government]] as supporting the ''[[apartheid]]'' regime of South Africa because it was pro-Western while the book's protagonist, the MI6 officer Maurice Castle, married to a [[Black people|black]] South African woman, provides information to the KGB to thwart MI6 operations.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=243}}<ref>{{cite news |title=Review of The Human Factor |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/graham-greene/human-factor/ |access-date=10 February 2021 |agency=Kirkus Reviews |date=1 March 1978}}</ref> Much of the plot of ''The Human Factor'' concerned a secret plan by the British, American and West German governments to buy up South African gold in bulk in order to stabilise the [[economy of South Africa]], which Greene presented as fundamentally amoral, arguing that the Western powers were betraying their values by supporting the [[White supremacy|white supremacist]] South African government.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=243}} Much controversy ensued when shortly after the publication of ''The Human Factor'' it emerged that such a plan had in fact been carried out, which led to much speculation about whether this was a coincidence or whether Greene had more access to secret information than he let on.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=243}} There was also much speculation that the character of Maurice Castle was inspired by Philby, but Greene consistently denied this.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=242}} Other novelists followed a similar path. [[Len Deighton]]'s anonymous spy protagonist of ''[[The IPCRESS File]]'' (1962), ''[[Horse Under Water]]'' (1963), ''[[Funeral in Berlin]]'' (1964), and others, is a working-class man with a negative view of "[[the Establishment]]".{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1997|p=337}}

Other notable examples of espionage fiction during this period were also built around recurring characters. These include [[James Mitchell (writer)|James Mitchell]]'s 'John Craig' series, written under his pseudonym 'James Munro', beginning with ''[[The Man Who Sold Death]]'' (1964); and [[Elleston Trevor|Trevor Dudley-Smith]]'s [[Quiller]] spy novel series written under the pseudonym 'Adam Hall', beginning with ''The Berlin Memorandum'' (US: ''The Quiller Memorandum'', 1965), a hybrid of glamour and dirt, Fleming and Le Carré; and [[William Garner (novelist)|William Garner]]'s fantastic Michael Jagger in ''Overkill'' (1966), ''The Deep, Deep Freeze'' (1968), ''The Us or Them War'' (1969) and ''A Big Enough Wreath'' (1974).{{citation needed|date=January 2021}}

Other important British writers who first became active in spy fiction during this period include Padraig [[Manning O'Brine]], ''Killers Must Eat'' (1951); [[Michael Gilbert]], ''Be Shot for Sixpence'' (1956); [[Alistair MacLean]], ''[[The Last Frontier (novel)|The Last Frontier]]'' (1959); [[Brian Cleeve]], ''Assignment to Vengeance'' (1961); [[Jack Higgins]], ''The Testament of Caspar Schulz'' (1962); and [[Desmond Skirrow]], ''It Won't Get You Anywhere'' (1966). [[Dennis Wheatley]]'s 'Gregory Sallust' (1934-1968) and 'Roger Brook' (1947-1974) series were also largely written during this period.{{citation needed|date=January 2021}}

Notable recurring characters from this era include [[Adam Diment]]'s Philip McAlpine as a long-haired, [[hashish]]-smoking [[fop]] in the novels ''The Dolly Dolly Spy'' (1967), ''The Great Spy Race'' (1968), ''The Bang Bang Birds'' (1968) and ''Think, Inc.'' (1971); [[James Mitchell (writer)|James Mitchell]]'s 'David Callan' series, written in his own name, beginning with ''[[Red File for Callan]]'' (1969); [[William Garner (novelist)|William Garner]]'s John Morpurgo in ''Think Big, Think Dirty'' (1983), ''Rats' Alley'' (1984), and ''Zones of Silence'' (1986); and [[Joseph Hone]]'s 'Peter Marlow' series, beginning with ''The Private Sector'' (1971), set during Israel's [[Six-Day War]] (1967) against Egypt, Jordan and Syria. In all of these series the writing is literary and the tradecraft believable.{{citation needed|date=January 2021}}

Noteworthy examples of the journalistic style and successful integration of [[fiction]]al characters with historical events were the politico-military novels ''[[The Day of the Jackal]]'' (1971) by [[Frederick Forsyth]] and ''[[Eye of the Needle (novel)|Eye of the Needle]]'' (1978) by [[Ken Follett]]. With the explosion of technology, [[Craig Thomas (author)|Craig Thomas]], launched the [[techno-thriller]] with ''[[Firefox (novel)|Firefox]]'' (1977), describing the Anglo–American theft of a superior Soviet jet aeroplane.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Holland|first=Steve|date=2011-04-13|title=Craig Thomas obituary|url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/apr/13/craig-thomas-obituary|access-date=2021-10-05|website=The Guardian|language=en}}</ref>

Other important British writers who first became active in spy fiction during this period include [[Ian Mackintosh]], ''A Slaying in September'' (1967); [[Kenneth Benton]], ''[[Twenty-fourth Level]]'' (1969); [[Desmond Bagley]], ''[[Running Blind (Desmond Bagley novel)|Running Blind]]'' (1970); [[Anthony Price]], ''The Labyrinth Makers'' (1971); [[Gerald Seymour]], ''Harry's Game'' (1975); [[Brian Freemantle]], ''[[Charlie M]]'' (1977); [[Bryan Forbes]], ''Familiar Strangers'' (1979); [[Reginald Hill]], ''The Spy's Wife'' (1980); and [[Raymond Harold Sawkins]], writing as Colin Forbes, ''Double Jeopardy'' (1982).

Philip Gooden provides an analysis of British spy fiction in four categories: professionals, amateurs, dandies and literary types.<ref>Gooden, Philip. (2023). "Shadowing Bond." ''The Book Collector'' 72 (Summer): 173-187. </ref>

=====American=====
During the war [[E. Howard Hunt]] wrote his first spy novel, ''East of Farewell'' (1943). In 1949 he joined the recently created CIA and continued to write spy fiction for many years. [[Paul Linebarger]], a China specialist for the CIA, published ''[[Atomsk (novel)|Atomsk]]'', the first novel of the Cold War, in 1949. During the 1950s, most of American spy stories were not about the CIA, instead being about agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who tracked down and arrested Soviet spies. The popular American image of the FBI was as "coolly efficient super-cop" who always successful in performing his duties.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=205}} The FBI director, [[J.E. Hoover]], had long cultivated the American press and Hollywood to promote a favorable image of the FBI.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=268}} In 1955, [[Edward S. Aarons]] began publishing the Sam Durell CIA "Assignment" series, which began with ''Assignment to Disaster'' (1955). [[Donald Hamilton]] published ''[[Death of a Citizen]]'' (1960) and ''[[The Wrecking Crew (novel)|The Wrecking Crew]]'' (1960), beginning the series featuring [[Matt Helm]], a CIA assassin and counter-intelligence agent.

Major General [[Edward Lansdale]], a charismatic intelligence officer who was widely credited with having masterminded the defeat of the Communist Huk rebellion in the Philippines inspired several fictional versions of himself.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=336}} Besides for ''The Quiet American'', he appeared as Colonel Edwin Barnum in ''[[The Ugly American (film)|The Ugly American]]'' (1958) by [[William J. Lederer]] and [[Eugene Burdick]] and as Colonel Lionel Teryman in the novel ''La Mal Jaune'' (1965) by the French writer [[Jean Lartéguy]].{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=336}} ''The Ugly American'' was written as a rebuttal to ''The Quiet American'' under which the idealistic Colonel Barnum operating in the fictional Vietnam-like Southeast Asian nation of Sarkhan shows the way to defeat Communist guerillas by understanding local people in just the same way that Lansdale with his understanding and sympathy for ordinary Filipinos was credited with defeating the Communist Huk guerrillas.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=336}} ''The Ugly American'' was greatly influenced by the modernization theory, which held Communism was something alike to a childhood disease as the modernization theory held that as Third World nations modernized that this created social-economic tensions which a ruthless minority of Communists exploited to seize power; what was required from the United States were experts who knew the local concerns in order to defeat the Communists until the modernization process was completed.

The [[Nick Carter-Killmaster]] series of spy novels, initiated by [[Michael Avallone]] and Valerie Moolman, but authored anonymously, ran to over 260 separate books between 1964 and the early 1990s and invariably pitted American, Soviet and Chinese spies against each other. With the proliferation of male protagonists in the spy fiction genre, writers and book packagers also started bringing out spy fiction with a female as the protagonist. One notable spy series is ''[[The Baroness (novels)|The Baroness]]'', featuring a sexy female superspy, with the novels being more action-oriented, in the mould of Nick Carter-Killmaster.

Other important American authors who became active in spy fiction during this period include [[Ross Thomas (author)|Ross Thomas]], ''The Cold War Swap'' (1966). ''[[The Scarlatti Inheritance]]'' (1971) by [[Robert Ludlum]] is usually considered the first American modern (glamour and dirt) spy thriller weighing action and reflection. [[Richard Helms]], the director-general of the CIA from 1966 to 1973 loathed le Carré's morally grey spy novels, which he felt damaged the image of the CIA, and encouraged Hunt to write spy novels as a rebuttal.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=337-338}} Helms had hopes that Hunt might write an "American James Bond" novel, which would be adopted by Hollywood and do for the image of the CIA what Fleming's Bond novels did for the image of MI6.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=338}} In the 1970s, former CIA man [[Charles McCarry]] began the Paul Christopher series with ''[[The Miernik Dossier]]'' (1973) and ''[[The Tears of Autumn]]'' (1978), which were well written, with believable tradecraft. McCarry was a former CIA agent who worked as an editor for ''National Geographic'' and his hero Christopher likewise is an American spy who works for a thinly disguised version of the CIA while posing as a journalist.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=337}} Writing under the pen name [[Trevanian]], Roger Whitaker published a series of brutal spy novels starting with ''[[The Eiger Sanction (novel)|The Eiger Sanction]]'' (1972) featuring an amoral art collector/CIA assassin who ostensibly kills for the United States, but in fact kills for money.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=337}} Whitaker followed up ''The Eiger Sanction'' with ''The Loo Sanction'' (1973) and [[Shibumi (novel)|''Shibumi'']] (1979).{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=337}}  Starting in 1976 with his novel ''Saving the Queen'', the conservative American journalist and former CIA agent [[William F. Buckley]] published the first of his Blackford Oakes novels featuring a CIA agent whose politics were the same as the author's.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=337}} Blackford Oakes was portrayed as a "sort of an American James Bond" who ruthlessly dispatches villainous KGB agents with much aplomb.{{sfn|Polmar|Allen|1998|p=337}}

The first American techno-thriller was ''[[The Hunt for Red October]]'' (1984) by [[Tom Clancy]]. It introduced CIA deskman (analyst) [[Jack Ryan (Tom Clancy)|Jack Ryan]] as a field agent; he reprised the role in the sequel ''[[The Cardinal of the Kremlin]]'' (1987).

Other important American authors who became active in spy fiction during this period include [[Robert Littell (author)|Robert Littell]], ''The Defection of A. J. Lewinter'' (1973); [[James Grady (author)|James Grady]], ''[[Six Days of the Condor]]'' (1974); [[William F. Buckley Jr.]], ''[[Saving the Queen]]'' (1976); [[Nelson DeMille]], ''[[The Talbot Odyssey]]'' (1984); [[W. E. B. Griffin]], the ''[[Men at War (series)|Men at War]]'' series (1984–); [[Stephen Coonts]], ''[[Flight of the Intruder (novel)|Flight of the Intruder]]'' (1986); Canadian-American author [[David Morrell]], ''The League of Night and Fog'' (1987); [[David Hagberg]], ''Without Honor'' (1989); Noel Hynd, ''False Flags'' (1990); and Richard Ferguson, ''Oiorpata'' (1990).

====Soviet====
The culture of Imperial Russia was deeply influenced by the culture of France, and traditionally spy novels in France had a very low status.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=38}} One consequence of the French influence on Russian culture was that the subject of espionage was usually ignored by Russian writers during the Imperial period.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=38}} Traditionally, the subject of espionage was treated in the Soviet Union as a story of villainous foreign spies threatening the USSR.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=39}} The organisation established to hunt down German spies in 1943, SMERSH, was an acronym for the wartime slogan ''Smert shpionam!'' ("Death to Spies!"), which reflected the picture promoted by the Soviet state of spies as a class of people who deserved to be killed without mercy.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=39}} The unfavorable picture of spies ensured that before the early 1960s there were no novels featuring Soviet spies as the heroes as espionage was portrayed as a disreputable activity that only the enemies of the Soviet Union engaged in.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=39}} Unlike in Britain and the United States, where the achievements of Anglo-American intelligence during the Second World War were to a certain extent publicized soon after the war such as the fact that the Americans had broken the Japanese naval codes (which came out in 1946) and the British deception operation of 1943, [[Operation Mincemeat]] (which was revealed in 1953), there was nothing equivalent in the Soviet Union until the early 1960s.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=39}} Soviet novels prior to the 1960s to the extent that espionage was portrayed at all concerned heroic scouts in the Red Army who during the Great Patriotic War as the war with Germany is known in the Soviet Union who go on dangerous missions deep behind the Wehrmacht's lines to find crucial information.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=39}} The scout stories were more action-adventure stories than espionage stories proper and significantly always portrayed Red Army scouts rather than ''Chekisty'' ("Chekists") as secret policemen are always called in Russia as their heroes.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=39}} The protagonists of the scout stories always almost ended being killed at the climax of the stories, giving up their lives up to save the Motherland from the German invaders.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=39}}

In November 1961, [[Vladimir Semichastny]] became the chairman of the KGB and sent out to improve the image of the ''Chekisty''.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=39}} The acronym KGB (''Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti''-Committee of State Security) was adopted in 1954, but the organisation had been founded in 1917 as the Cheka. The frequent name changes for the secret police made no impression with the Russian people who still call any secret policeman a ''Chekisty''. Semichastny felt that the legacy of the ''Yezhovshchina'' ("Yezhovz times") of 1936-1939 had given the KGB a fearsome reputation that he wanted to erase as wanted ordinary people to have a more favorable and positive image of the ''Chekisty'' as the protectors and defenders of the Soviet Union instead of torturers and killers.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=39}} As such, Semichastny encouraged the publication of a series of spy novels that featured heroic ''Chekisty'' defending the Soviet Union.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=39-40}} It was also during Semichastny's time as KGB chairman that the cult of the "hero spies" began in the Soviet Union as publications lionised the achievements of Soviet spies such as Colonel Rudolf Abel, Harold "Kim" Philby, Richard Sorge and of the men and women who served in the ''Rote Kapelle'' spy network.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=39-40}} Seeing the great popularity of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels in Britain and the United States, Soviet spy novels of the 1960s used the Bond novels as inspiration for both their plots and heroes, through Soviet prurience about sex ensured that the ''Chekisty'' heroes did not engage in the sort of womanising that Bond did.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=39-40}} The first Bond-style novel was ''The Zakhov Mission'' (1963) by the Bulgarian writer [[Andrei Gulyashki]] who had commissioned by Semichastny and was published simultaneously in Russian and Bulgarian.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=40}} The success of ''The Zakhov Mission'' led to a follow-up novel, ''Zakhov vs. 007'', where Gulyashki freely violated English copyright laws by using the James Bond character without the permission of the Fleming estate (he had asked for permission in 1966 and was denied).{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=40}} In ''Zakhov vs. 007'', the hero Avakoum Zakhov defeats James Bond, who is portrayed in an inverted fashion to how Fleming portrayed him; in ''Zakhov vs. 007'', Bond is portrayed as a sadistic killer, a brutal rapist and an arrogant misogynist, which stands in marked contrast to the kindly and gentle Zakhov who always treats women with respect.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=40}} Zakhov is described as a spy, he more of a detective and unlike Bond, his tastes are modest.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=40}}

In 1966, the Soviet writer [[Yulian Semyonov]] published a novel set in the Russian Civil War featuring a Cheka agent Maxim Maximovich Isaуev as its hero.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=40}} Inspired by its success, the KGB encouraged Semyonov to write a sequel, ''Semnadtsat' mgnoveniy vesny'' ("Seventeen Moments of Spring"), which proved to one of the most popular Soviet spy novels when it was serialized in ''Pravda'' in January–February 1969 and then published as a book later in 1969.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=38-40}} In ''Seventeen Moments of Spring'', the story is set in the Great Patriotic War as Isayev goes undercover, using the alias of a Baltic German nobleman [[Stierlitz|Max Otto von Stierlitz]] to infiltrate the German high command.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=38-40}} The plot of ''Seventeen Moments of Spring'' takes place in Berlin between January–May 1945 during the last days of the Third Reich as the Red Army advances onto Berlin and the Nazis grew more desperate.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=40-41}}  In 1973, ''Semnadtsat' mgnoveniy vesny'' was turned into a television mini-series, which was extremely popular in the Soviet Union and turned the Isayev character into a cultural phenomena.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=38-40}} The Isayev character plays a role in Russian culture, even today, that is analogous to the role James Bond plays in modern British culture.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=38}} As aspect of ''Seventeen Moments of Spring'', both as a novel and the TV mini-series that has offended Westerners who are more accustomed to seeing spy stories via the prism of the fast-paced Bond stories is the way that Isayev spends much time interacting with ordinary Germans despite the fact these interactions do nothing to advance the plot and are merely superfluous to the story.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=40}} However, the point of these scenes are to show that Isayev is still a moral human being, who remains sociable and kind to all people, including the citizens of the state that his country is at war with.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=40}} Unlike Bond, Isayev is devoted to his wife who he deeply loves and despite spending at least ten years as a spy in Germany and having countless chances to sleep with attractive German women remains faithful towards her.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=43}} Through Isayev is a spy for the NKVD as the Soviet secret police was known from 1934 to 1946, it is stated quite explicitly in ''Semnadtsat' mgnoveniy vesny'' (which is set in 1945) that he left the Soviet Union to go undercover in Nazi Germany "more than ten years ago", which means that Isayev was not involved in the ''Yezhovshchina''.{{sfn|Jens|2017|p=42}}

====Later====
The June 1967 [[Six-Day War]] between Israel and its neighbours introduced new themes to espionage fiction - the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, against the backdrop of continuing Cold War tensions, and the increasing use of terrorism as a political tool.

====Writers on Cold War era: 1945–1991====
{| class="wikitable sortable" class="sortable wikitable"
! Author(s) !! Title !! Publisher !! Date !! Notes
|-
| [[Stephen E. Ambrose|Ambrose, Stephen E.]]|| ''Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Intelligence Establishment''|| — || 1981– || —
|-
| [[Christopher Andrew (historian)|Andrew, Christopher]] and [[Vasili Mitrokhin]] || ''The Sword and the Shield: The [[Mitrokhin Archive]] and the Secret History of the KGB'' || Basic Books || 1991, 2005 || {{ISBN|0-465-00311-7}}
|-
| Andrew, Christopher, and Oleg Gordievsky || ''KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev'' || — || 1990 || —
|-
| Aronoff, Myron J. || ''The Spy Novels of John Le Carré: Balancing Ethics and Politics'' || — || 1999 || —
|-
| [[Richard M. Bissell Jr.|Bissell, Richard]] || ''Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs'' || — || 1996 || —
|-
| [[Lori Lyn Bogle|Bogle, Lori]], ed. || ''Cold War Espionage and Spying'' || — || 2001– || essays
|-
| Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin || ''The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World'' || — || — || —
|-
| Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin ||  ''The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West'' || Gardners Books  || 2000 || {{ISBN|978-0-14-028487-4}}
|-
| Colella, Jim || ''My Life as an Italian Mafioso Spy'' || — || 2000 || —
|-
| Craig, R. Bruce || ''Treasonable Doubt: The Harry Dexter Spy Case'' || University Press of Kansas || 2004 || {{ISBN|978-0-7006-1311-3}}
|-
| [[Stephen Dorril|Dorril, Stephen]] || ''MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service'' || — || 2000 || —
|-
| Dziak, John J. || ''Chekisty: A History of the KGB'' || — || 1988 || —
|-
| [[Robert Gates|Gates, Robert M.]] || ''From The Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents And How They Won The Cold War'' || — || 1997 || —
|-
| Frost, Mike and Michel Gratton || ''Spyworld: Inside the Canadian and American Intelligence Establishments'' || Doubleday Canada || 1994 || —
|-
| [[John Earl Haynes|Haynes, John Earl]], and [[Harvey Klehr]] || ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America'' || — || 1999 || —
|-
| [[Richard Helms|Helms, Richard]] || ''A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency'' || — || 2003 || —
|-
| Koehler, John O. || ''Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police'' || — || 1999 || —
|-
| [[Joseph E. Persico|Persico, Joseph]] || ''Casey: The Lives and Secrets of William J. Casey-From the OSS to the CIA'' || — || 1991 || —
|-
| [[David Murphy (CIA)|Murphy]], David E., [[Sergei Kondrashev|Sergei A. Kondrashev]], and George Bailey || ''Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War'' || — || 1997 || —
|-
| Prados, John || ''Presidents' Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II'' || — || 1996 || —
|-
| Rositzke, Harry. || ''The CIA's Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action''|| — || 1988 || —
|-
| [[James Srodes|Srodes, James]] || ''Allen Dulles: Master of Spies'' || Regnery || 2000 || CIA head to 1961
|-
| Sontag Sherry, and [[Christopher Drew (journalist)|Christopher Drew]]|| ''[[Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage]]'' || Harper || 1998 || —
|-
||| ''Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies and Secret Operations'' || Greenwood Press{{ISBN?}} || 2004 || —
|}

* Anderson, Nicholas  ''NOC''  Enigma Books 2009 – Post-Cold War era
* [[Ishmael Jones]] ''The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture'', Encounter Books 2008, rev. 2010

=====Writers of other nationalities=====
* [[Michael Ross (Mossad officer)|Michael Ross]], ''The Volunteer: The Incredible True Story of an Israeli Spy on the Trail of International Terrorists'' McClelland & Stewart 2007, rev. 2008
* Jean-Marie Thiébaud, ''Dictionnaire Encyclopédique International des Abréviations, Singles et Acronyms, Armée et armament, Gendarmerie, Police, Services de renseignement et Services secrets français et étrangers, Espionage, Counterespionage, Services de Secours, Organisations révolutionnaires et terrorists'', Paris, L'Harmattan, 2015, 827 pFrench journalist [[Gérard de Villiers]] began to write his ''SAS'' series in 1965. The franchise now extends to 200 titles and 150 million books.
* [[Julian Semyonov]] was an influential spy novelist, writing in the [[Eastern Bloc]], whose range of novels and novel series featured a [[White Movement|White Russian]] spy in the [[Soviet Union|USSR]]; [[Stierlitz|Max Otto von Stierlitz]], a Soviet [[Mole (espionage)|mole]] in the Nazi High Command, and [[Felix Dzerzhinsky]], founder of the [[Cheka]]. In his novels, Semyonov covered much Soviet intelligence history, ranging from the Russian Civil War (1917–1923), through the [[World War II|Great Patriotic War]] (1941–45), to the Russo–American Cold War (1945–91).
* Swedish author [[Jan Guillou]] also began to write his ''[[Coq Rouge (novel)|Coq Rouge]]'' series, featuring Swedish spy Carl Hamilton, during this period, beginning in 1986.