By James Wolff
It’s an oft-repeated line that people read spy novels in order to make sense of the world. Who could blame anyone for wanting a little help? The world we live in is as bewildering as it is turbulent, and it can be hard to keep up with events, let alone understand their true significance. Ukraine, Venezuela, Epstein, Greenland – it seems that each day brings a new crisis, a new conflict, a new trove of documents that promise to reveal the truth behind the headlines. Even supporters of the war against Iran have struggled to articulate its true purpose, and it appears that the White House – with all the expertise at its disposal – has been taken by surprise to learn of the ways that Iran is able to retaliate. If those in power get things wrong, how are those of us without access to a daily CIA briefing supposed to make sense of the world?
But spy novels? Unless I’m missing something obvious, is there any reason why a spy novelist should be considered well-qualified to explain the world to anyone? Even those spy novelists who were once spies (I count myself among them) are not allowed to tell you what they really know, with all sorts of punishments awaiting anyone who disobeys the government censor by giving away details of an imminent revolution or a military capability. The publishing cycle is so slow that even a novel crammed with genuine insights runs the risks of feeling stale by the time it finally hits the bookshops. Far better to read Foreign Affairs or The Economist if you want the real inside scoop.
If that’s true, though, why do we read spy novels? My answer to this is that spy novels are efficient mechanisms for revealing character. I know that sounds horribly reductive. Novels aren’t mechanisms – they’re places where we encounter feelings that move us, characters who can seem more real than our friends and neighbours, narratives that linger long after we turn the final page. Novels are places where we encounter magic.
At the same time, though, there is something about the spy set-up that strikes me as unique. It may be the way that its focus is both global and deeply personal – the way that its spotlight falls on world events and a solitary individual shaping those events whose true purpose remains unknown to everyone around them. The backdrop of world-changing events is like a giant spotlight that falls upon the solitary character, revealing weaknesses and failings as much as hidden strengths.
These questions of context and character felt very relevant to me during the writing of my latest novel, Spies and Other Gods. One of the cast, a spy in his sixties called Sir William Rentoul, finds himself in the twilight of a long and celebrated career that has seen him promoted to the very top of British Intelligence.
Mourning his wife and regretting the ways in which over the years he sacrificed his family to a glittering career, Sir William also finds himself struggling with the recent appearance of a brain fog that has him fearing for his sanity. Names, dates and events have turned slippery. Sir William’s response to this is to throw himself into one last operation, as he wrestles with a rebellious Parliamentary investigator named Aphra McQueen, a potential internal whistleblower and an Iranian assassin who has left a trail of dead bodies across Europe. It’s not giving away too much to say that Sir William proves to be as preoccupied with his own predicament – with the ghosts that haunt him – as much as matters of national security, especially as the spy agency he has led for all these years shows signs of turning against him.
The English poet Philip Larkin famously wrote that ‘What will survive of us is love.’ It’s a lesson that Sir William struggles to learn. Operations – like careers, like lives, like books – come to end, and it’s the things that are left behind when everything is said and done that really matter.
JAMES WOLFF is the author of the Discipline Files series, including the three novels Beside the Syrian Sea, How to Betray Your Country, and The Man in the Corduroy Suit. The first book in the series was a Times Thriller of the Month, and the latest installment is the only espionage novel to be longlisted for the 2023 CWA Silver Dagger award. A former British intelligence officer, he grew up in the Middle East and now lives in London. More at https://jameswolffauthor.com/
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