He earned a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and completed his education with the master’s degree he received from Penn State in nineteen-sixty-seven. He grew up in a culturally rich environment as his family has ancestral ties to Russia, Latvia, and Poland. He was born in nineteen-forty-one in New York City and grew up in Manhattan, the Upper West Side to be specific. He likes to work with different settings and characters as an author and this is made clear by none of his works -with two exceptions which I will share with you in a little bit- sharing a common plot. His work usually takes place before or during the Second World War and he is praised for his accurate representation of the world in that time period, notably Eastern Europe. Besides writing novels, he also worked as a copywriter and magazine writer as well as a columnist before his debut. He has also stated the names of the household names Arthur Koestler and Joseph Roth as major sources of inspiration for his works. Perhaps when people read the most outlandish stories of jet-setting, high-stakes spy tales, they like knowing that deep down, under all the false identities and double-crossing, it's rooted somewhere in reality.Said to be the heir to the legacy of iconic names like Eric Ambler and Graham Greene, Alan Furst is a United States-born Jewish writer who has mainly focused on historical spy novels. ![]() But it's hard to deny the benefits of insider knowledge. In these cases, research and imagination have inspired the authors' tales of espionage. Those experiences have shaped the international intrigue he brings to life in his books. Robert Ludlum crafted "The Bourne Identity" series without the CIA on his resume - though he was once a Marine.Īnd Olen Steinhauer, the man behind the Yalta Boulevard books and "The Tourist," has never been a spy - as far as we know.ĭaniel Silva, who has a string of bestselling spy novels, is also not spy, but he put in his time traveling the world as a journalist, often reporting from the Middle East. Some writers have managed to break through without insider knowledge of the gadgets and spy craft that have shaped previous bestsellers. (The most mysterious line from Matthews' bio may be that he and his wife "raised two daughters in countries they aren't allowed to name.")īut experience isn't everything. Even Jason Matthews, a modern bestselling author known for "Red Sparrow," put in 30 years at the CIA. Somerset Maugham, Charles McCarry, Plame, Rimington and more. The list of authors with intelligence experience on their resume is deep: Fleming, le Carre, Graham Greene, William F. The position had previously been cloaked in secrecy.Īfter retiring in 1996, she channeled her years of intelligence experience into a memoir, and then, as with so many spies before her, she turned to fiction. She was also the first director general of the agency to have her name publicized when she took the role, and to be openly photographed. ![]() Rimington made history in 1992 when she became the first woman to lead MI5. The first book, "Blowback," centered on the Iranian nuclear project, which Plame had once investigated for the CIA.įittingly, The Washington Post - the same paper that once exposed her cover - called the books "James Bond in high heels."Īnother author known for turning secrets into spy novels is Stella Rimington. In 2013, she teamed up with mystery writer Sarah Lovett to write the first in a series of spy novels starring Vanessa Pierson - a fictional alter ego for Plame. When your cover is blown, what else is there to do but write books?Īfter she was outed as a spy in a 2003 Washington Post column, Plame first wrote a tell-all about her experiences in the agency: "Fair Game: How a Top CIA Agent Was Betrayed by Her Own Government." Then, she turned to fiction. Covert missions and spy novels are not all a man's game.ĬIA agent Valerie Plame followed a similar path to le Carre, nearly 50 years after he put pen to paper.
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