Espionage has certainly changed since the days of W. Somerset Maugham's 1928 classic Ashenden: Or the British Agent. Where do you hide now-with spy cams, surveillance cameras and directional mikes, GPS tracking, computer profiling, surveillance drones and spy dust, superfast communication devices, and heat-identifying glasses that look through the walls of a building? But the essence of the job hasn't changed a bit. The spy still inhabits a world of shifting reality, with an uncertain payoff, if any, at the end. He (a "she" in two of these stories) trusts no one completely. In the end, the spy is alone. Maybe that's why the secret agent fascinates: we never face the choices they must make routinely. Two of these books are set in the past-1931 Hong Kong and the Middle East of the 1930s. The rest deal with today's Brave New World.-David Keymer (DK), Modesto, CA.
展开▼
