Are We in The Decade of the Spy?

Guest Blogger Gayle Lynds, author of THE LAST SYPMASTER,a member of the Association for Intelligence Officers and co-founder with David Morrell of International Thriller Writers, thinks so.

Slap on your sunglasses, and buckle on your trenchcoats.  There’s a growing trend in fiction that will take over bestseller charts within the next couple of years.  The genre is espionage novels — “international thrillers.”

You think I’m wrong?  Let’s take a look at real life. Without a natural interest base, no trend can begin much less burgeon.  This is the Decade of the Spy, and here’s why.  Not even during the Cold War was the intelligence community as intensely in the public eye as it has been since 9/11.  Headlines shout the latest revelations and investigations.  The under-thirtysomethings are so entranced that applications to the CIA have never been higher. 

With loud sturm and drang, we’re going through the most radical restructuring of our intelligence community since the CIA was fashioned from the ashes of the OSS after World War II.  The result is a brand-new espionage czar — the Director of National Intelligence, orchestrating all of our covert agencies, with explosive fallout that includes the recent resignation of Porter Goss from his post as director of Central Intelligence. 

The public’s deep interest is also reflected in fiction.  Spies appear with astonishing regularity on big and small screens. Hit movies like "Syriana," "The Constant Gardener," and "Match Point" garner award nominations, while TV series like "Alias" and "24" have become near icons, and remarkably quickly.  Hollywood has announced it is looking for good novels about spies.  Google lists more than 30,000 entries under "spy club," "espionage club," and "spy fans." 

And sales of spy novels have done a complete reversal from the 1990s when publishing declared anything espionage as dead as the Cold War.  Today, editors actively look for books in the field.

The enticement is so great that long-time professionals from the intelligence community like Richard A. Clarke (The Scorpion’s Gate), who was White House counterterrorism chief to several presidents, and Stella Rimington (At Risk), who headed Britain’s MI5, have entered the field with first novels that became best-sellers. 

Others who are successfully plowing this literary field, all relatively new, all with increasing sales, include Alex Berenson (The Faithful Spy), Barry Eisler (The Last Assassin), Brian Haig (The President’s Assassin), Christopher Reich (The Patriots Club), and Brad Thor (Takedown). 

The Decade of the Spy is both fascinating and perilous — the stuff of great drama. It rivets the public, it rivets authors, and it’s only going to grow in popularity.