What's New
The last ten major changes to the site.
- 03/27/2025 - Joining the compendium today is a two-book series from just a few years ago about a British close protection expert who is "talked" into working with MI5 on things he would rather not. Author Anthony Riches does a pretty good job with these adventures about , a fellow who knows how to handle anger issues.
- 03/26/2025 - Take a fantastic author like Olen Steinhauer and ask him to create a television series about spies. Then put it on a non-broadcast network and give it some license to be as great as it can be. You will end up with . And you will be smiling with contentment.
- 03/25/2025 - How bad did I blush while reading the two books by Alexis Shore about of MI5? A lot. Because, as I write in My Comments, "Not many as intense - and totally sex-oriented - as the adventures of Kate Devereaux". Oh, boy!
- 03/24/2025 - I am a fan of parkour - watching, not doing. That makes this series today so much fun as is nuts for it and is darned good at it. She is also darned good at being a CIA field agent, too, as we see in the five adventures out for her so far by author Vin Strong.
- 03/23/2025 - Joining the compendium today is a series which got its start three quarters of a century ago (1950) and yet still has new adventures coming out, albeit by a whole different set of writers and artists. , a couple of British fellows working for MI5, was created by a Belgian writer/artist and has been periodically kept alive over the years by other people. Darned good adventure stories involving all sorts of unusual situations including time travel.
- 03/22/2025 - As I mention in My Comments on the young adult readers series entering the compendium this Saturday, I cannot imagine learning that my 70+ years old grandparent was an active kick-butt secret agent. It is fun reading about the new world being entered by the , penned just over a decade ago by Alex Ko.
- 03/21/2025 - The three (so far) adventures of that make up the series joining the compendium today are spy-adjacent-ish. Mostly military action (think SEALs on the ground and Top Gun in the sky) with more than a touch of police procedural from a terrific NCIS agent. That is what is in store for you with this series by Jack Stewart but there is a lot of cloak and dagger skullduggery as well, which is why Bancroft has been invited here.
- 03/20/2025 - Today entering the compendium is a radio operator. Not nowadays, though, back in the late 60s. is not a spy. He is just a fellow who, as I mention in My Comments, is "just there when trouble invariably entered the room". Author A. P. Handley gives us five pretty entertaining spy adventures about Rook's Secret Histories.
- 03/19/2025 - If you want a large dollop of paranoia mixed with your spy fiction, give a try. The three books and one novella in this recent series by Cam Shaw will provide it quite enjoyably.
- 03/18/2025 - My Comments for the series entering the compendium today starts: "What a pleasure it is to come across a series as rich and flavorful as this series by CIA-trained David McCloskey." I do not have to tell the many thousands of spy fans who have already become addicted to his works but for the four or five who have not yet found him, please check out his terrific series and the fascinating Artemis Aphrodite Procter.
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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!!