What's New
The last ten major changes to the site.
- 09/19/2024 - There is a thriller subgenre I call treasure hunter which touches on the international intrigue subgenre often enough to bleed over the line so as to qualify for my admittedly loose qualifications. Now, often the hunter(s) are looking for some lost artifact from a lost civilization which could change the modern world or destroy it. Mind you, I always wonder if it was so darned powerful, how come that civilization became, um, lost? Never mind! Today I add one of those cross-overs series because of a major co-star in the series, Heidi Moneymaker, who pulls the protagonists into CIA stuff a whole lot. is that team and it is led by a thief named Guy Bodie who is a hoot! There are 11 adventures so far, excellently penned by David Leadbeater and I am certain, and pleased to think, there will be more to come.
- 09/18/2024 - Have you ever heard of the Interpol Spy Agency? Me neither! But that is who today's newcomer to the compendium works for. is the fellow's name. Not only had I never heard of this ISA, I had never heard of Jax until a fellow spy-fan told me about him. How on earth did I miss this fellow when he came out back in '86 with the first of two really bad movies? I adore B-movies!! This one, though, I graded a bit lower.
- 09/17/2024 - "I liked Archer with all his flaws and enjoyed these four books." That is how I ended My Comments about today's entrant into the compendium. Angus McLean has done a terrific job of giving us an exciting series about a man and his team taking on some pretty overwhelming odds and finding a way to overcome the overwhelm. The group is The Division and the lead character, IMHO, is .
- 09/16/2024 - It not often that I give a series a grade below a C but I do for today's entry. D. That is how I rated this series but, hey! It wasn't a D-! That says something, right? Who has "earned" such a mark, you might ask? The answer is Pierre Rey and Loup Durand who published these nine adventures under the name of Doug Masters. And the character? . That is how he is marketed. His real name is Tony Nicholas Twin but thought of there being two of him out there is ... unpleasant.
- 09/15/2024 - Back in 1975 or so, I was knee-deep in my devotion to series in general and spy series in particular and was always on the lookout for something new. I was pleased to find though less than thrilled with after reading what would go on to be a 9-book series by an Israeli author spiffed up by a veteran American writer. In the almost 50 years that has passed since the first one came out, upon a re-read for this entry, my opinion did rise somewhat and overall the work of Harry Arvay and Gil Brewer is enjoyable. I have filed these Israeli Secret Service tales under that organization's fiction spymaster .
- 09/14/2024 - On this Saturday, I enter a kid's spy series that I, as a parent of a tween twenty years ago, watched that child watching this series and found that I, too, really enjoyed it. A lot. Lots of silly activity tossed in with exciting escapades (literally) and tons of spy-ish shenanigans. was a very entertaining animated series about which a ton of terrific books and movies and odds-and-ends have been produced to tell her outrageous story. Mega congrats to creators Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle. And thanks from that tween and from me, both back then and now.
- 09/13/2024 - We travel back in time to 1972 for a two-book series that takes place quite a ways in the future. Penned by highly entertaining Robert Lory (of the Dracula series of horror/adventure books that I adored back in the day), this pair of tales follow FIA operative as he goes about his very exciting and thrilling missions on behalf of The Head, a rather spooky entity. A fun combination of science fiction and spy fiction with a lot of wit thrown in.
- 09/12/2024 - My Comments for today's entry into the compendium, a two-adventure series from two decades ago, starts with "Author Chris Ryan does action really, really well and sitting down with one of his many adventures is always a treat." The protagonist in this spy series is not a spy and does not want to be. He is a soldier who is pushed into events and then does some pushing of his own. is not the kind of man you should push, though, as a fair number of people learn the hard way.
- 09/11/2024 - A well-respected suspense author from the 1940s got her start with a pair of mystery/spy adventures which take their rightful place in the compendium today. The author was Dorothy B. Hughes and she is sadly not as remembered as her dozen-plus novels from that period should have her be - the best, IMHO, is Ride The Pink Horse. Her two forays into the espionage realm were about the delightful and quite interesting , an actress turned fashion designer who gets deeply involved in spy hunter because of her ex-turned-new husband. Really enjoyable thrillers.
- 09/10/2024 - Let's pop back in time to 1972 and two very interesting adventures merging sci-fi and spy-fi. John T. Phillifent crafted these tales about Rex Sixx and Roger Lowrey, both agents with . I had fun with these and wrote "These are fun, albeit short - largely novella-ish sized, adventures that you can read in one or two sittings. When you are done, you will likely, as I did, have a smile on your face."
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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!!