What's New
The last ten major changes to the site.
- 08/19/2019 - In fiction, as in life, it is quite common for a young man to have issues with his father over a career, especially when Daddy is rich and powerful and used to calling the shots. , a 15-book (so far) series is one fine example of that though in this case, Daddy is a real S.O.B. The organization he was an intricate part of, and which Walker the younger has to fight, really needs being put down but being so powerful, it won't die easily. Luckily Lacklan is a trained professional with one heck of an incentive. Please welcome him to the compendium.
- 08/18/2019 - Again we head back in time, this journey taking us to the period from 1937 to 1945, to visit a senior agent of the British Secret Service as he goes about his duties in Europe and then later in his old stomping grounds of South-East Asia. 11 adventures make up the recorded tales of and each one I have perused has been very enjoyable to read.
- 08/17/2019 - First Look: Today we are going way, way, way back in time to a very odd and oddly entertaining series by a master storyteller names Edgar Wallace. Wallace gave the world a lot of fun books and tons of stories and a couple of series. This one would not rank as one of his better works but it is fascinating. The main character is , a German agent spying on the British and he is both very good and very bad at his job. I have read several of the stories so far (have not yet entered their plots, though) and I marvel at what I perceive to be Wallace's backwards insult of German Intelligence. Of course, I could be reading them all wrong but I don't think so. What better way to show the ineptitude of someone than showing them repeatedly almost succeeding. You can see for yourself because the book is readily available in ebook format these days despite being from one hundred years ago.
- 08/16/2019 - Some years ago I was asked why I did not have on my site and I came up with a lame excuse or two and slinked away. Then I read terrific articles from the Paperback Warrior and Glorious Trash about the series and knew I really should put it on. And promptly forgot. Years later, ta da! Now Glorious Trash really seemed to like them but then considering the site's name, that fits! Paperback Warrior, not so much and am in that camp. Still, check out what I wrote and then for better information, check out both those sites to really have fun learning more.
- 08/15/2019 - A series from the late 60s which I have only seen a couple of but which I have now gotten the entire season and am enjoying immensely joins the compendium today. is a sub-bureau of Interpol tasked with handling the "unsolvable". It is really a fun series and takes me back 50 years.
- 08/14/2019 - From the mid to late 60s comes a comicbook spy series with a ton of action and some humor and pretty darn good plots. The adventures include a couple of memorable enemies, an organization named WAM (Warfare Against Mankind) and a particularly nasty and powerful individual called King Kobra. is the codename, and the only name we know of him, of the main character though he has a best friend and partner named Frollo who could have warranted his name on the marquee.
- 08/13/2019 - First Look: We've popped back in time now and then recently so I thought we would leap a whole lot of centuries into the future with a first look at Gardner F. Fox's take on a futuristic James Bond. is the love-'em and leave-'em hero of this two-book series that obviously did well enough to not warrant a third.
- 08/12/2019 - First Look: A trip to the past today, though written just a couple years ago. The time of the adventures is the close of the 1700s and the hero of the three-book historical spy series is , former Lieutenant in the British Army before being seconded to British Intelligence. It is a time of British expansion and war with Napoleon and this new-to-the-spy-game agent will be quite busy.
- 08/11/2019 - In keeping with my adding several British spy series (or pseudo-spy), I present another one from the early 70s. This one starred Gene Barry, an actor I loved a lot as Bat Masterson and Amos Burke but not so much as Gene Bradley, aka . The couple dozen episodes and one novelization were mildly interesting but more in the realm of a donut rather than a meal - tasty at the time but fleeting and usually not memorable.
- 08/10/2019 - Since we were back in the late 30's for yesterday's entry, let's stay in that decade, albeit 5 years earlier, for today's new member to the compendium. This gentleman, real name Ford Duane, goes by the rather odd moniker of , taken because he wears skin-tight black gloves, the trigger finger of which is in a bright crimson color. He fights any and all spies and saboteurs and infiltrators he finds in New York City and he is not very friendly with them.
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What's New!
SPY FICTION!
Say the word SPY to most people and they will respond with James Bond,
with good reason as he is the best known of all fictional spies. With 20+ blockbuster movies over the last 40+ years,
along with the standard movie hype, virtually the entire world knows about 007 and his License To Kill.
Of course, James Bond is by no means the only spy in the world of fiction, just the best known. Who are the rest?
Who has his or her own license to kill, thrill, or chill. How do these agents stack up against each other? Who would
you want beside you in a car chase, in a knife fight, in a dark alley, or beneath the covers?
This site is dedicated to the many, many men and women who, at least in fiction, have defended our freedoms against all forms of enemies, foreign and domestic. Well, granted a few of them were just in it for the money and many were only after the excitement, and sex played a huge role in the motivation of more than a few. But still, their actions helped not only preserve our way of life (on paper) but also brought us, the readers, many hours of escapism and vicarious pleasure.
So, who are these people that I have slaved so diligently to present to you? They are the men and women of spy-fi about whom there is a series. Single-book characters need not apply. There has to be at least two books. Two's the minimum but the more the merrier.
Moreover, I have confined membership to the English language. If it wasn't put into English so I can read it, I haven't worried about it.
Each spy has his or her own page. Click on the "Characters" button to go to a listing page. Click on the letter the
character's last name starts with (or a more common moniker like "Death Merchant" if appropriate). That will take one
step further into the labrynth. Finally, select the character's name from the list and, voila!
Have fun!!