Every so often I’ll be highlighting some of the spy games I’ve picked up from various second hand stores over the years. I haven’t played most of these yet, as finding willing spy game participants can be tricky, but I’m hoping to road test some of these as the kids get older. HOMELAND was the …
Every so often I'll be highlighting some of the spy games I've picked up from various second hand stores over the years. I haven't played most of these yet, as finding willing spy game participants can be tricky, but I'm hoping to road test some of these as the kids get older. Once upon a …
It's been over two years but I've laid hands on yet another abridged version of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. We've seen two previous abridged versions, one in a magazine called True and the next in Reader's Digest. My latest find ran in a magazine called Show - The Magazine …
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 …
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Matryoshka Dolls
Kate Atkinson’s latest book Transcription tells the story of fictional spy Juliet Armstrong. She’s an eighteen year old who is recruited to assist with an operation to track German spies in London during WW2. While a colleague reels them in from the apartment next door, she transcribes their recorded conversations. Atkinson jumps between three timelines …
The biggest story of last year was the announcement that John le Carré had written a new Smiley novel. Fans of le Carré's all over the world were shocked. Le Carré had seemed to put a button on Smiley with The Secret Pilgrim so every fan is excited about the new novel. As a collector, …
Publishers are always looking to refresh the backlist of authors and sell more copies. In the 70’s the beautiful painted book covers went out of fashion and photo covers came into vogue. The UK publisher Fontana had paperback rights to many of the well known thriller writers of the time like Desmond Bagley, Alastair Maclean, …
Publishers are always looking to refresh the backlist of authors and sell more copies. In the 70's the beautiful painted book covers went out of fashion and photo covers came into vogue. The UK publisher Fontana had paperback rights to many of the well known thriller writers of the time like Desmond Bagley, Alastair Maclean, …
One of the best things over the past few years has been the appearance of the Spybrary podcast. Spybrary is run by Shane Whaley, an avid spy fan who wanted to create something that gave people a place to learn more about spy fiction and create a community of spy fans. The podcast has consisted …
Publishers are always looking to refresh the backlist of authors and sell more copies. In the 70's the beautiful painted book covers went out of fashion and photo covers came into vogue. The UK publisher Fontana had paperback rights to many of the well known thriller writers of the time like Desmond Bagley, Alistair MacLean, …
Publishers are always looking to refresh the backlist of authors and sell more copies. In the 70's the beautiful painted book covers went out of fashion and photo covers came into vogue. The UK publisher Fontana had paperback rights to many of the well known thriller writers of the time like Desmond Bagley, Alistair Maclean, …
Last year I put together a short list of some of my favorite things from the past year. I’ve done it again and here they are in no particular order - A Divided Spy by Charles Cumming - This one is a little selfish. I won a auction to have my name appear in the …
In honor of publication week for A Legacy of Spies I've collected a "best of" list of some of my le Carré posts. I also recommend reading Matthew Bradford's great series of posts looking back at the Smiley series book by book. First, here's my spoiler free review of the new book, A Legacy of …
Over the past few years I've become much more knowledgeable on book collecting then I ever thought I would. As I've fallen down the rabbit hole of collecting books, I've picked up a few tricks and secrets I thought I'd pass along. Please use them for good and not evil. Tip # 1 - Choose …
The Charlie Muffin spy series by a Brian Freemantle is among one of the most underrated spy series. Running sixteen novels over the course of forty years it's followed the trials and tribulations of the working class Muffin as well as the state of Russia from the height of its power in the Cold War …
I've written previously about how much I enjoy Adam Hall's Quiller. In The Berlin Memorandum, released in 1965 and retitled to The Quiller Memorandum in the US. Today I'd like to highlight a few of the signed copies of Quiller books I own. The first edition of the The Berlin Memorandum has a flat red dust …
Just before the release of The Honourable Schoolboy, Time published a cover story profile of John Le Carré. If you're too lazy or busy to read Adam Sisman's recent doorstopper of a biography, the Time profile is a very good shortcut. The work of Stefan Kanfer, Dean Fischer and Anne Hopkins, it's a very nice …
My love of spy fiction isn't constrained to prose. There are several graphic novels with an espionage theme that have been able to hold their own with the best of spy novelists. Antony Johnston's duo The Coldest City and The Coldest Winter are two of them. I’ve been a reader of Antony Johnston’s work for …
Throughout the 1960's Evelyn Byrne, a teacher at a New York public school, wrote well known authors and asked if they would write back with the books that had the biggest impact on them as they were in their teens. She would then print these responses in the school newspaper in hopes that it would …
Here are some of my favorite things I did or discovered in 2016 in no particular order- Slough House series - Mick Herron blew me away with his spy series. I burned through all 5 books in the series in a matter of weeks. I read an advance copy of Spook Street, out early next year …
You've read all of John le Carré’s novels, short stories, opinion columns, letters to the editor, his biography and autobiography. Before you go back to the beginning and start all over, you want to try something different. What to do? Read books le Carré has recommended of course! Le Carré is very deliberate in what …
I wrote at the end of last year about lost spy novels by famous authors. Recently a new book came to light that I am extremely excited for and wanted to make sure readers knew about. Donald Westlake Westlake was a prolific author and has the distinction of creating two iconic crime fiction characters. The …
If you are a male of a certain age who grew up in America then chances are that you held an issue of Mad Magazine in your hands at some point in your adolescence. You always knew something was big in the popular culture when you saw it in Mad. In the September 1966 issue …
We left off discussing an abridged version of "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" and I'm back after digging up another one. From 1937 to the present Readers Digest condensed books have been providing shortened versions of the popular fiction of the day. The winter 1964 release saw a collection of four novels.Included …
In honor of John le Carré's new release, The Pigeon Tunnel, throughout the month of September I'm highlighting some trivia about his past novels. I thought about including this one with the other The Spy Who Came in from the Cold editions in part one but this seemed worthy of a couple posts of it's …
Following up on my previous post about "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," in the next few posts I'll be highlighting some of the odd or rare versions of the book I have. First is a compilation of le Carré's third, fourth, and fifth novels - The Spy Who, A Small town in …
Abel Uribe/Chicago TribuneLinking here to a short profile that appeared in the Chicago Tribune book supplement Printers Row a couple years back. They have a weekly feature on various local book lovers and their collection. The story was written by Laura Pearson, @tislaurapearson, and the pictures below are by a great Tribune photographer Abel Uribe. …
The 50th anniversary of the release of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold passed us by a couple of years ago, and I thought I'd post about a few copies of that important piece of spy fiction that I've picked up over the years. In addition, I'll comment on what to look for when …
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