Tag Archives: Spy fiction

The Recruit, season one (Netflix 2022)

Posted on by Henry

I finished the first season of The Recruit a couple weeks back. Once I started, it was hard for me to look away. I’m a sucker for spy stories. I enjoyed the characters. And the “CIA lawyer” angle is fun.

The show also had a really tight hold on what I’ll call ”the train-wreck factor.” That kept me staring, with the same sort of guilty, morbid curiosity that goes into rubbernecking. Watching someone get in over their head and then desperately claw their way towards whatever safety they can find (while being incapable of acting on the recognition that they might be in too deep) is fascinating.

Yet as I wrote while I was watching it, the protagonist of the show feels like the wrong person. Spy stories ought to feature more leads who aren’t super-agents, and who aren’t young white men. The SOE understood this during WW2, and a different show will give you a taste of that. The Recruit gets partway there: the lead isn’t a super-agent, and the show has many characters who aren’t young white men… but the young white man is still the focus of the show.

Nothing against Noah Centineo, who plays the lead, but if his character Owen and Fivel Stewart’s Hannah had simply swapped roles I think the show would have been more interesting. Yes, there would no doubt have been more other characters and plot points to rewrite after that, but I think the basic bones of the show were solid. I just would have been more interested if the main character weren’t a young straight white man.

I think the writers knew this. They were self-aware enough, had perhaps heard enough critiques before, to call out the social positions some of the characters occupy and how that shapes their worldview or constrains their actions—especially in comparison with the possibilities open to other characters. Because of that, the show felt at times like it was implying that Owen was able to get away with some particularly stupid shit specifically because of his social position.

But while that seems both honest and accurate, the recognition also feels almost like lampshading. Like, the writers decided to justify their choice of protagonist instead of trying a more interesting and possibly more difficult approach. And that only makes their focus on a very Hollywood-normal protagonist more perplexing to me.

Did the writers look at the option of having the lead be someone else, and then back off? Were they planning for the next season?

I have no idea what pushed the writers to make the choice they did. Perhaps they had well thought-out reasons. Maybe they chose to focus on a young straight white man because nearly anyone else would have been less clueless, or would have suffered greater consequences for their mistakes, or because the writers couldn’t imagine anyone else. Maybe they really wanted to play with specific character dynamics or story beats and didn’t believe they could explore those with anyone other than a straight white man. Or maybe they thought there was no way to have their script and their show greenlit if they chose a different protagonist.

Any of those could be true.

Or, maybe, they fell back on writing a young straight white male lead because they were comfortable with that. The show’s creator, Alexi Hawley, certainly has practice with writing for the straight white male lead, having written for Castle and The Rookie. I suspect he also has a decent idea of what he can get approved and what he can’t, so… yeah. Could be either.

Anyway.

Despite what feels like a missed opportunity, I’m still likely to watch the next season when it comes out.

I found the first season to be compulsive fun, despite not being quite what I wanted. I liked that it’s a spy story where the main character isn’t a highly trained badass. I enjoyed the characters involved. And I’m curious about where they’ll take those characters going forward. I can imagine several courses forward that would be a lot of fun, and would resolve many of my complaints. But that’s all speculation.

So, should you watch it?

If you don’t want to watch another show about a young straight white male protagonist who gets in way over his head and desperately flounders along, you should stay away. If you try the first episode and bounce off, or just feel the rising urge to scream because of the lead character… that isn’t likely to change much.

On the other hand, if you yearn for more spy fiction that doesn’t focus on the Bonds or the Bournes, this show and its frequently-punched main character will give you a little bit of what you want. If you don’t mind the lead character being yet another young white guy, and want internecine intra-department conflict and twisty loyalties, this will give you that too.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be contemplating the love/hate relationship between fanfic and the original text.

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Mrs. Pollifax, elderly women as spies cont.

Posted on by Henry

As I was writing last week’s post, I knew that I was forgetting something. I’d read fun stories about an elderly woman involved in espionage before. Or more accurately, I’d listened to them: some of my childhood’s many long car rides were filled with hours of Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax books on tape. Young Henry thought those books were both hilarious and excellent.

I haven’t read them since. But I want to. I want to read them again, find out whether or not they’re as fun as I remember them being. In my memory, they were a perfect storm of ridiculousness and good genre fiction.

That said, I’m a little hesitant too. The first books in the series (there are many of these books) were written in the 60s. The last one was published in 2000. Given the gulf of years, I bet I’m going to stub my toes on something.

But I’m willing to bet it’ll be worth it. At worst, they’ll give me a place to start in my hunt for similar genre fiction. And if they’re anywhere near as good as I recall, I’ll probably be guffawing my way through them.

Plus, for all the absurdity and narrative contrivances that I remember in the several Mrs. Pollifax books I listened to, I think they captured several very important points that flashier spy stories forget. It’s valuable to be overlooked and underestimated. And—maybe this was just my impressionable youth speaking, but—Dorothy Gilman was nearly of an age with my grandmother, and Mrs. Pollifax’s surprising skillset reminded me of my grandmother too.

I remember growing up with plenty of stories about my grandmother. She fixed a stranger’s broken car on the side of the road (in Uganda or Kenya I think), using safety pins and pantyhose to replace a timing belt. She reversed a van at speed down a dirt track while being chased by a bull elephant. She had other adventures too, but more regularly she would weigh and vaccinate hundreds of babies in an open-air clinic, or help local women establish clinics in their villages and towns. And when I knew her as an older woman, she kept a thriving thicket of a garden, pointing me to the various things she wanted me to cut or harvest, showing me the good berry brambles.

So when I read Mrs. Pollifax, I see a little bit of my grandmother. They’re not the same person at all, they’re not doing the same things, but… in some ways they’re cut from similarly capable cloth. And reading that in a piece of spy fiction, when the protagonist sometimes underestimates herself almost as badly as her opposition does, is simply a treat.

Anyway, yes, I’m looking forward to picking up those books again. Maybe I’ll have something more for you here when I do.

White boys and spy stories

Posted on by Henry

There’s more to be written here than I’ll address today. I’m putting this here because I’m sure I’ll have future posts on the topic. This particular topic came to mind through watching some of The Recruit, and through starting Arabella The Traitor of Mars.

Lots of spy fiction (I haven’t done a survey but I’d bet it’s the majority of it) is obsessed with the perspectives of white men. A revolutionary realization, I’m sure.

The thing is… that obsession is laughable. It’s ridiculous. I’ve known this for some time, but every so often I’m forcibly reminded of it.

Despite the relative position of power held by white men in Western society—no, because of it—white men are a strange choice for your default spies. If you could pick someone to be your spy, you’d be better off picking someone more likely to be overlooked or ignored by the society in which you want to gather intelligence. There are certainly other challenges for agents who aren’t white men, and those agents might struggle to reach every place or position of influence an agency might want access to (honestly, spy agencies should want agents of every shape and flavor), but I think there’s a solid reason the British SOE valued middle-aged and not-quite-elderly women for work in Nazi-occupied Europe.

And yet, so many of our spy stories still dwell on white male protagonists. It’s not surprising. White male protagonists have been the default for many genres for many decades, alas. But I’d love to see some fun spy fiction about a frumpy little elderly woman who is consistently overlooked and underestimated. I’m sure the genre exists, now I just need to go find it.

A Marvellous Light, by Freya Marske

Posted on by Henry

Freya Marske’s A Marvellous Light is magic society intrigue set in early 1900s Britain, with a heaping serving of gay romance on top.

I knew I was reading something very gay before I started, given what little I’d heard about the book beforehand. I *hadn’t* realized I was going to be reading lurid sex scenes. Fortunately, I was able to avoid reading those scenes in public (something I’ve tried to be cautious about since a few awkward experiences in high school—Covid has actually been helpful there), and I was able to just relax and enjoy the book.

If you read the things I had to say about Ursula Vernon’s books, you’ll understand what I mean when I say that this book delivered all the gay romance I’d felt was lacking in the first two Saint of Steel books. Also, I just realized that I read the newest one (Paladin’s Hope) and didn’t write about it here. I’ll try to rectify that.

But I’m distracting myself. This book is good stuff. And it opens with an excellent dramatic scene that sets the stakes for all that is to follow.

In fact, thinking about it from a composition perspective, I wonder when Marske decided to use that as the opening scene; it’s the right choice, I think, and does a marvelous job of creating tension for the reader, but it doesn’t seem like the obvious jumping off point for the next set of scenes. It feels like the teaser intro used to open a spy movie and showcase the future badness our heroes will face. That’s not the wrong choice or the wrong genre for the rest of the story, it’s just not the surface genre for the next step of the story. And I really want to know what inspired Marske to thread these pieces together this way.

Backing up…

Freya Marske has combined several genres here, as I mentioned up top. There’s gay romance, there’s magical fantasy, there’s historical society intrigue and drama (subgenre: British, early 1900s), and there’s the related spy genre. I tie those last two together because, in many ways, spy stories (more le Carré, less Fleming) feel like a reduction of society intrigue: concentrated, cooked down over some higher stakes to something more piquant, seasoned with a dash of paranoia and murderousness. The ultimate dish here is less twisty than an actual le Carré story, but with some of the same flavors and machinations.

So. Back to the novel (heh) genre blending of the book’s first chapters…

When the first scene of the book feels like the opening to a spy story, turning up the pressure and letting us know that something dire is afoot, that’s great. Then the story segues into something that feels more like society drama and leaves the threat lurking under the surface, like a shark too deep to show the reader its fin. And that works too. But, as a tonal shift, I don’t think the choice to do things that way is immediately self-evident. Or, it wasn’t an obvious option to me until I read this.

By the end of the story, it’s clear that all those elements work well together. What’s more, the genres feel well-blended; I’m really looking forward to the (clearly intended) sequel(s) and how they play with this mixture, because I suspect this story’s continuation will give me even more of the magical intrigue and spy fiction that I desperately want. If there’s more queer romance in it, all the better.

All of which is to say, if this blend of genres sounds like your cup of tea then you should hop to and find yourself a copy. It’s good stuff.

Atomic Blonde

Posted on by Henry

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Convoluted, paranoia-inspiring, and extremely violent, Atomic Blonde feels like what a Bond film would be if the brutality of 2006’s Casino Royale met the conflicted and complicated world of *actual* spy fiction.

Actually, that’s a better description of the movie than I’d thought it would be. Atomic Blonde is full of gorgeously choreographed and grimly performed fight scenes (as one might expect from David Leitch, director of John Wick), and it is definitely not a film intended for a passive or unthinking audience. The underlying story is twisty, and nearly every person’s loyalty is deeply questionable, enough so that I spent a good portion of the movie not sure who was on which side; perfect, really, for this sort of spy movie. Not so good if you’re watching this thinking that you’ll have a neatly packaged Bond-esque film, but quite possibly more fun because of that.

I kind of wish that there’d been a little more in the way of clues for me to catch throughout the movie, or that I’d put together the ones that were there faster. If I had, I wouldn’t have been quite as confused in the end. But when I reflect on it, everything holds together, and I only have a deeper appreciation for what’s there.

I won’t give you any spoilers (apart from saying that if you can’t handle visceral uncomfortable violence, you probably shouldn’t watch this movie), but I will say that I rather liked Atomic Blonde. It wasn’t exactly what I’d expected, and I’m glad that it wasn’t. While I’d happily watch Charlize Theron play Bond in some sly, neatly packaged, thoroughly sanitized version of what current American moviegoers have come to think of as “a spy-action movie,” the gnawing distrust and complicated loyalties of Atomic Blonde deliver an excellent spy movie experience, and a better one than I’d thought I’d find.

Flash Fiction: Miranda (part 1 of 4)

Posted on by Henry

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Eva Green in Casino Royale feels like the right face for this role.

This week’s Flash Fiction (as brought to you by Chuck Wendig’s weekly challenge) is a 1000 word beginning to what will eventually be a 4 part story.  The basic idea, as I understand it, is to write 1000 words and then swap sections with another author, or maybe just play musical chairs or something.  Technically I wasn’t supposed to make any sort of ending, but instincts kicked in and I started wrapping up the story before I really knew what I was doing; fortunately, I left things wide-open enough for someone to continue where I left off without too much trouble.  So, without further ado, enjoy!

(Edit from 2/20/2015: CJ, over at cjreader.com, has picked up this piece and written part two.  It’s great!  You can find it over here)

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Dearest Charles,

It takes 31 separate steps to set up a proper party, or so Mother always said.  She spent so much time nattering on about how best to do this or that, I don’t know whether she realized that I tuned her out nearly every step of the way.  It wasn’t that I hated her, though I did a little at the time, it was just that there were always things that seemed more important for me to pay attention to.  I think she’d be pleased to know that I’ve come around these days, that I now treasure some of the things she tried so hard to drill into my head.  I’ve only really held onto the most important ones, I think, and a few of the ones that she repeated too many times for me to forget.  What, you ask, brings this to mind today?  The most important of my mother’s lessons: always have fall guys, always have alibis.  I really do think she’d be pleased by how much I’ve put that lesson to good use. Continue reading →

The Restoration Game, by Ken MacLeod

Posted on by Henry

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Eastern European politics (both Soviet and post-Soviet), color revolutions, spy games, long hidden family secrets, and a quiet sci-fi premise?  Sign me up.  Ken MacLeod‘s The Restoration Game gives all of that, plus a little bit more.  Maybe that’s why I liked it so much.

It’s a quick read, with an engaging and easy-to-follow female protagonist who, as the story unfolds, comes to feel like the appropriate scion of all those who’ve come before her.  I’ll explain that, I swear.  The book gets bonus points from me for having a female narrator; I’m writing a piece with a teenaged female narrator (as I’ve mentioned previously), and everything is grist for the mill.  And I should note that while I quite liked Lucy’s narration in The Restoration Game, I’d love to hear women’s opinions of the narrator’s experience and voice in this book… I don’t exactly have a good frame of reference by which to judge it.

About that scion comment: our protagonist, Lucy Stone, opens the story with a cliffhanger and no context.  It works well, catching you quickly and pulling you in, and then the entire book becomes an extended digression to give the context for that scene, only finally reaching resolution (appropriately enough) at the very end of the piece.  At the beginning, you have no idea of what Lucy has been through, what her family history is, or what she is capable of… but by the end, things fall wonderfully into place.  It’s wonderfully done, and flows smoothly from start to finish.

Ok, that wasn’t quite right.  There’s still that initial sci-fi premise, right at the very beginning of the book before Lucy ever has a chance to speak, and I bounced off it the first two times I opened the book.  It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t what I thought I’d set out to read and wasn’t nearly as interesting to me at the very beginning as it was by the very end.  After some reflection, I think MacLeod placed the introduction of the sci-fi premise correctly; there really isn’t a better place to put it that makes more sense and doesn’t disrupt the story further.  Without that initial introduction, later elements of the book would make very little sense and feel insufficiently well signaled (here we are back at the perils and prerequisites of good foreshadowing).  MacLeod clearly set himself a difficult project, possibly without realizing that he was doing it, but I think he managed to do a good job of it.

It looks like this post isn’t even going to have a break.  The Restoration Game is fast enough and internally intricate enough that I don’t want to ruin anything for you by accident, so I won’t bother with the usual danger of discussing potential spoiler material.  Suffice to say that it’s a good book, one worth picking up for quick fun, especially if you’re interested in a jaunt through spy games and epistemological thought experiments.

Arctic Rising, by Tobias Buckell

Posted on by Henry

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Tobias Buckell has made me very happy indeed.  I can’t decide whether I prefer Arctic Rising to Hurricane Fever, and I really liked Hurricane Fever (seriously, read my review).  It’s rare that I have the pleasure of reading a fast paced high-tension thriller set in a brilliantly developed near-future, let alone reading two of them back to back.  Buckell’s world-building is a tremendous draw for me.  It’s quality shines through in the ease with which he introduces the near-future to the reader; he keeps his obvious enthusiasm for the world he’s created tightly leashed, only revealing it in dribs and drabs, more often than not as an in-character rumination or observation that feels entirely appropriate.  Better yet, I didn’t find any gaping implausibilities.  I’ll admit that I didn’t take a fine-toothed comb to the books and their established background, but they hold together well enough to offer a compelling (and somewhat distressing) view of an imminent future.  If you want to treat yourself to a jaunt down “doesn’t this seem likely…” lane, and you want some hair-raising hijinks in the bargain, try either of these books.  If you don’t want to be spoiled for either book before you read it, be sure to read Arctic Rising first, though I did it in the opposite order and still enjoyed myself immensely.

Why did I enjoy it so much?  Well…

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Hurricane Fever, By Tobias S. Buckell

Posted on by Henry

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I first heard about this book through Scalzi’s Big Idea feature on his blog.  I was captivated by Buckell‘s premise, a spy novel set in the Caribbean with a protagonist who actually lived and grew up there instead of simply going there to vacation, infiltrate, or establish a villainous lair.  It pays special attention to what it’s like to have your home relegated to the status of a playground for the wealthy, and how a pan-Caribbean federation might look in the near future.  Hurricane Fever is a fast paced delight that delivers on its premise and offers the best Bond movie I’ve read in years.  It’s a violent and active spy-thriller, and one in which the main character is more often mistaken for a member of the waitstaff than a tourist.  I found it both engaging and refreshing, and now I want to read Buckell’s other work.

Read on for more detail.  Don’t worry, I’ll protect you from undue spoilers.

Continue reading →

The Quiller Memorandum, by Adam Hall

Posted on by Henry

Ah, pseudonyms.  Adam Hall was one of the pseudonyms used by the author Elleston Trevor (which was itself not the author’s original name).  It seems entirely appropriate to me that such an excellent spy novel should come from someone who felt so compelled to shroud and change their own identity.  If you like spy stories and intrigue, or would like to try dabbling in them for the very first time, look no further.  Quiller is a far better Cold War spy than the cinematic Mr. Bond ever was, more deeply focused on the details of spycraft, practicing intimate information war as a metaphoric knife fight where you’re never truly certain as to who holds the advantage.  Drawing blood is rarely the point of the duel, and secrets are more valuable than lives.  The Quiller Memorandum, as you might have guessed, is a very exciting book.

Does the title feel achingly familiar?  Just like something that you’ve read before?  Well…

Continue reading →