Volume 5, Number 12 · January 20, 1966
Spies
By Walter Laqueur
Spy
by Gordon Lonsdale
Hawthorn, 218 pp., $4.95
The Penkovskiy Papers
by Oleg Penkovskiy
Doubleday, 411 pp., $5.95
Spy stories have been a legitimate literary genre ever since Joshua Ben Nun was sent into the Land of Canaan; at their best they combine elements of tension and surprise, of politics, intrigue, military adventure, and occasionally sex. The output reached high tide in the years after the first and second wars; some were partly fictional or exaggerated; others, as far as one could judge, quite realistic; a few became bestsellers. The cold war, on the other hand, has so far produced little authentic spy literature. There are of course good reasons for this; the clash of ideologies makes everything more complicated. Instead of good old-fashioned intrigue we get long-winded and boring political arguments. The great age of the individual spy seems to be past. Today's master spy is neither a crack pistol shot nor necessarily a great womanizer, but a faceless man belonging to an anonymous organization.
Review, 2468 words
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