Great writers of spy fiction have often been spies themselves

Lit life |

I just finished a fascinating book about a World War II spy plot. It's the story of fake intelligence planted on a dead Welshman with a bogus identity — and it's all true.

I picked up "Operation Mincemeat" (Harmony) because it's by Ben Macintyre, who wrote "Agent Zigzag," the spellbinding chronicle of a charming British criminal/double agent in World War II (also all true). "Mincemeat" features some of the same characters, eccentric British intelligence operatives with exceedingly vivid imaginations.

This band of soldiers, sailors, coroners and aristocrats hatched a plan to float a dead body onto the Spanish coast, supposedly a plane crash victim, actually left to drift by a U-boat-dodging British submarine. Its pockets were stuffed with the detritus of an imaginary life (bar tabs, theater tickets, love letters). Its briefcase was filled with fake intelligence documents alleging that the Allies would mount their main invasion somewhere other than Sicily. The Germans bit. They reinforced other fronts, the Allies invaded Sicily, and the rest is history (this story was also the basis of the 1953 book and 1956 movie "The Man Who Never Was," but Macintyre has substantially enhanced the story).

But I digress; here is a point Macintyre makes. He writes of spies in the "Mincemeat" gang and others: "The greatest writers of spy fiction have, in almost every case, worked intelligence before turning to writing:" Here's a partial list:

Graham Greene, a wartime intelligence officer in West Africa who based his novel "Our Man in Havana" on a real spy code-named Garbo.

John Buchan, author of the World War I-based spy thriller, "The Thirty-Nine Steps."

Ian Fleming of the James Bond books, an author who mined his own real-life work for British intelligence. His inventor of spy gear in the Bond books, "Q," was informed by the work of Charles Fraser-Smith, a real person who invented "shoelaces containing a vicious steel garrote" for agents parachuting into France.

John le Carré, author of the George Smiley trilogy ("Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," "The Honorable Schoolboy" and "Smiley's People,") as well as the Cold War classic "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold."

This got my little gray cells going, and I thought of some more recent examples, including former MI5 director-general Stella Rimington ("At Risk," "Secret Asset") and Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism adviser to the National Security Council ("Breakpoint").

I believe I have only scratched the surface of this topic, so in the interest of a long, lovely summer reading about spies, here's a call to readers. What is your favorite spy novel written by a spy? If you just can't come up with one of those, what is your favorite spy novel, period? E-mail those suggestions to me at mgwinn@ seattletimes.com, and I will present the results in a future column.

Mary Ann Gwinn: 206-464-2357 or mgwinn@seattletimes.com.