Thanks so much for the book recommendations (both Hvistendahl's and your own).
What to watch: season 3 of Babylon Berlin! For anyone who hasn't watched it yet, I recommend this series in the strongest terms as good historical TV, but also because season three has some cute scenes depicting early/interwar uses of spy equipment - eg. "tiny" cameras used to photograph restricted documents in the secret state archives.
You already mentioned The Americans, so I will take a different tack and suggest "Burn After Reading," the Coen Brothers movie about a bunch of hapless strivers who get caught up in CIA stuff they don't understand. It's dark comedy, but perhaps a necessary balance to the hypercompetent intelligence services portrayed in most spy fiction -- here, it's all a deadly comedy of errors, and by the end of the movie, nobody who's left is really clear on what happened or why.
Well, this isn't a very original recommendation, but the grand master of spy fiction is the great John Le Carré. I recommend his books but if you're looking for something less labor intensive, you can't go wrong with either adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - the 2011 film and the 1979 BBC miniseries are both excellent in their own ways. I also really liked the first season of Counterpart, which takes a major science fiction conceit and wraps it in Le Carré-ian ground level espionage and atmosphere.
Love your recommendations and the others by the readers who posted here. Not a big "spy novel" reader but I do remember watching "I Spy" and "Get Smart" as favorite tv shows when a young teenager. "The Americans" and "Homeland" both great to watch. I prefer reading true stories about espionage and spies, but in reality, who knows what the truth really is.
Thanks so much for the book recommendations (both Hvistendahl's and your own).
What to watch: season 3 of Babylon Berlin! For anyone who hasn't watched it yet, I recommend this series in the strongest terms as good historical TV, but also because season three has some cute scenes depicting early/interwar uses of spy equipment - eg. "tiny" cameras used to photograph restricted documents in the secret state archives.
You already mentioned The Americans, so I will take a different tack and suggest "Burn After Reading," the Coen Brothers movie about a bunch of hapless strivers who get caught up in CIA stuff they don't understand. It's dark comedy, but perhaps a necessary balance to the hypercompetent intelligence services portrayed in most spy fiction -- here, it's all a deadly comedy of errors, and by the end of the movie, nobody who's left is really clear on what happened or why.
Well, this isn't a very original recommendation, but the grand master of spy fiction is the great John Le Carré. I recommend his books but if you're looking for something less labor intensive, you can't go wrong with either adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - the 2011 film and the 1979 BBC miniseries are both excellent in their own ways. I also really liked the first season of Counterpart, which takes a major science fiction conceit and wraps it in Le Carré-ian ground level espionage and atmosphere.
Love your recommendations and the others by the readers who posted here. Not a big "spy novel" reader but I do remember watching "I Spy" and "Get Smart" as favorite tv shows when a young teenager. "The Americans" and "Homeland" both great to watch. I prefer reading true stories about espionage and spies, but in reality, who knows what the truth really is.