The glory days of MI6’s old guard swapping state secrets over whiskey at Boodle’s gentlemen’s club may be a fading memory but the ‘old boys’ network has always found a warm home in espionage fiction.
In Ian Fleming’s first 007 novel, Casino Royale (1953), he writes, Miss Moneypenny would have been desirable but for her eyes, which were cool and direct and quizzical.
“Translation: She would have been pretty, but she was smart,” said Ava Glass, the Texas-born author of Alias Emma, one of a new generation of writers creating female protagonists who can tough it out in a world of Russian assassins or duplicitous co-workers.
“I might never have written a spy novel were it not for television,” Glass told SPYSCAPE. “Series like The Americans, Tehran, and Homeland brought interesting, flawed women spies to the forefront and treated them as equals to men in virtually every way… Watching these series felt like someone was opening a door and waving me in. I think more women are going to join the genre now.”
The glory days of MI6’s old guard swapping state secrets over whiskey at Boodle’s gentlemen’s club may be a fading memory but the ‘old boys’ network has always found a warm home in espionage fiction.
In Ian Fleming’s first 007 novel, Casino Royale (1953), he writes, Miss Moneypenny would have been desirable but for her eyes, which were cool and direct and quizzical.
“Translation: She would have been pretty, but she was smart,” said Ava Glass, the Texas-born author of Alias Emma, one of a new generation of writers creating female protagonists who can tough it out in a world of Russian assassins or duplicitous co-workers.
“I might never have written a spy novel were it not for television,” Glass told SPYSCAPE. “Series like The Americans, Tehran, and Homeland brought interesting, flawed women spies to the forefront and treated them as equals to men in virtually every way… Watching these series felt like someone was opening a door and waving me in. I think more women are going to join the genre now.”
Gayle Lynds’ Masquerade (1996) was the first spy novel written by a woman to become a bestseller, helping to open the ‘bro’ genre to other female writers. Yet many lists of Must-Read Spy Novels are still top-heavy with male writers (with absolutely no disrespect meant to literary luminaries John le Carré, Len Deighton, Anthony Horowitz, Alan Furst, Mick Herron, and their brethren.)
Even Wikipedia’s top 125 most notable espionage writers only include about five female spy writers. In an age where even James Bond is willing to take a back seat to the first female 007, isn’t it time for publishers, journalists, and fans of the genre to admit more female authors to the old boys club? Some suspect the reluctance may start with the authors themselves.
“I think women suffer from imposter syndrome more than men, so they are sometimes reticent to make themselves vulnerable publicly - which writing and publishing a book does,” said Alex Finley, a former CIA counterterrorism officer and Russia expert who publishes the ‘Victor Caro’ series of espionage novels.
“Once you put your book out there, you have no control over how anyone will think about it or about you,” said Finley, a SPYEX consultant. “But then I got such great feedback and responses from people who had been involved in the war on terror, who told me how much my book meant to them. It was one of the most satisfying experiences I've had.”
Lauren Wilkinson, author of the bestselling American Spy(2019) found herself in uncharted territory as a Black author writing about a Black CIA agent on a mission in West Africa’s Burkina Faso.
“I felt that, hey, I'm doing something that hasn't been done a whole lot before,” Wilkinson told The Spying Game podcast. “Why not just go as far as I can with the new stuff? Because who knows if I'll ever get another shot at writing a book. They might get the giant hook and pull me off the stage.”
Manda Scott, author of A Treachery of Spies, used to publish espionage novels under the gender-neutral pen name MC Scott because, back in 2010, her publisher believed ‘nobody in Tesco will buy a spy book by a woman’.
Has much changed?
Scott is publishing under her own name now, and a handful of female spy novelists are ranking in the top echelons of the bestseller charts - Kate Quinn’s The Rose Code among them. Although male writers still outgun female authors on Amazon’s top sellers’ list of espionage books, there’s definitely been progress.
There are also an increasing number of spy books written by women who’ve been real-life spies from the CIA to MI5, Homeland Security, and US Naval Intelligence.
Stella Rimington, the former director general of Britain’s MI5 intelligence service, published her memoir, Open Secret, in 2001 and followed up with her Liz Carlyle spy novel series.
SPYEX consultant and ex-CIA officer Christina Hillsbergdiscusses how to raise resourceful, self-sufficient children in License to Parent (2021). Former US Naval interrogator Lena Sisco offers advice on how to spot deception in You’re Lying! (2015), while Evy Poumpouras’ Becoming Bulletproof (2020) explains how to read people, influence situations, and live fearlessly.
So how does Evy Poumpouras, a straight-talking former Secret Service Special Agent and presidential bodyguard, size up situations and read people?
“The number one thing to being a good reader is to stop thinking about yourself and really look at the human being across from you and they're going to show you everything,” Poumpouras told The Spying Game podcast. “And that's how you figure out motives, values, what they think, what they feel.”
“And the best part, the number one thing I tell people, is shut up and let people talk.”
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