Looking back at Spy Write in 2018 I had a lot of fun trying to keep up with posting something once a week. This post will look back at some of the high points.

Author interviews

It was a good year for talking with authors. I traded questions with Toby Manning on his look at John le Carré, Chicago author Michael Moreci on his spy thriller The Throwaway and Mick Herronon his writing.

Spies of Chicago

I was born and raised in Chicago and, although we don’t have a ton of spy related books and movies, I was happy to shine a light on some of the Chicago writers who have written spy novels and spy novels set in Chicago.

Broken Covers

2018 was the year I became mildly obsessed with photo covers for books released in the early 70’s. Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, Desmond Bagley and more all suffered through some extremely wonky reissued covers.

Slough House Reread

Over the course of last year I reread and posted on each of Mick Herron’s Slough House books. This involved thinking about the various themes, locations, characters and collecting tips for the books. It also resulted in a Slough House glossary and hopefully will serve as a resource for folks discovering the series.

Breaking some mild news

It’s great to have met and interacted with the online spy fiction community and this year I had an opportunity to provide some new information for fellow spy fans.

Out of nowhere I found that nearly a year after le Carré’s A Legacy of Spies was released, Barnes and Noble started stocking signed copies they had kept on ice for several months.

Fans of Slough House have been eagerly awaiting the release of Mick Herron’s next book. So I was happy to give an update with information I found on Slough House 6, the title, release date and synopsis.

That puts 2018 in the books. Looking at the coming year we’ve got a new le Carré and Herron books coming, I’m hoping to highlight some spy novels by authors outside the usual white male Brit or Yank and posting some long gestating piece I hope to finish. So I’m looking forward to what 2019 brings.

Happy New Year!