The Spy Who Shunned Me

I was glancing at a not-so-recent Stacker.com ‘Best 100 Spy Movies of All Time’, thinking it was right up the dark alley of our spymaster, David Edgerley Gates. If you did something extremely stupid, he could make you disappear.

And then I noticed something stupid.

Where was Ipcress File? And Day of the Jackal? Manchurian Candidate? Riddle of the Sands? Casablanca? And where the hell was 39 Steps? And why the Hail Freedonia was Duck Soup in the list? Hey, I love the Marx Brothers but it bears as much resemblance to a spy movie as Margaret Dumont does to John le Carré.

I had to stop because so many possibilities flooded my mind. The article should be retitled ‘100 Pretty Good kinda-Spy Movies of Small Time, Give or Take.’ I bet David could name many more.

So here is the core of Stacker’s list followed by a few unranked suggestions of my own.

100	Body of Lies	2008	Ridley Scott		50	Clear and Present Danger	1994	Phillip Noyce
99	Salt	2010	Phillip Noyce		49	Rogue One: A Star Wars Story	2016	Gareth Edwards
98	Moonraker	1979	Lewis Gilbert		48	Breach	2007	Billy Ray
97	Never Say Never Again	1983	Irvin Kershner		47	Spy	2015	Paul Feig
96	Shadow Dancer	2012	James Marsh		46	Eye in the Sky	2015	Gavin Hood
95	Octopussy	1983	John Glen		45	Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol	2011	Brad Bird
94	The Man from U.N.C.L.E.	2015	Guy Ritchie		44	The Bourne Identity	2002	Doug Liman
93	The Informant!	2009	Steven Soderbergh		43	Red Cliff	2008	John Woo
92	The Eagle Has Landed	1976	John Sturges		42	Emperor and the Assassin	1998	Kaige Chen
91	Atomic Blonde	2017	David Leitch		41	Flame & Citron	2008	Ole Christian Madsen
90	Until the End of the World	1991	Wim Wenders		40	Inherent Vice	2014	Paul Thomas Anderson
89	You Only Live Twice	1967	Lewis Gilbert		39	No Way Out	1987	Roger Donaldson
88	Cloak & Dagger	1984	Richard Franklin		38	Black Book	2006	Paul Verhoeven
87	The Fourth Protocol	1987	John Mackenzie		37	The Age of Shadows	2016	Kim Jee-woon
86	RED	2010	Robert Schwentke		36	Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation	2015	Christopher McQuarrie
85	Mission: Impossible	1996	Brian De Palma		35	The Bourne Supremacy	2004	Paul Greengrass
84	Snowden	2016	Oliver Stone		34	Europa Europa	1990	Agnieszka Holland
83	Allied	2016	Robert Zemeckis		33	Lady Vengeance	2005	Park Chan-wook
82	The Matador	2005	Richard Shepard		32	Dr No	1962	Terence Young
81	Michael Collins	1996	Neil Jordan		31	Inglourious Basterds	2009	Quentin Tarantino
80	Eye of the Needle	1981	Richard Marquand		30	The Imitation Game	2014	Morten Tyldum
79	Horror Express	1972	Eugenio Martín		29	The Man Who Knew Too Much	1956	Alfred Hitchcock
78	Patriot Games	1992	Phillip Noyce		28	The Quiet American	2002	Phillip Noyce
77	OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies	2006	Michel Hazanavicius		27	A Beautiful Mind	2001	Ron Howard
76	The Front Line	2011	Jang Hoon		26	Infernal Affairs	2002	Andrew Lau, Alan Mak
75	Thunderball	1965	Terence Young		25	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy	2011	Tomas Alfredson
74	The Hunt for Red October	1990	John McTiernan		24	Ghost in the Shell	1995	Mamoru Oshii
73	Spy Game	2001	Tony Scott		23	The Constant Gardener	2005	Fernando Meirelles
72	Mission: Impossible III	2006	J.J.		22	Bridge of Spies	2015	Steven Spielberg
71	Despicable Me 2	2013	Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud		21	Skyfall	2012	Sam Mendes
70	True Lies	1994	James Cameron		20	From Russia with Love	1963	Terence Young
69	Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid	1982	Carl Reiner		19	Casino Royale	2006	Martin Campbell
68	The Falcon and the Snowman	1985	John Schlesinger		18	Enter the Dragon	1973	Robert Clouse
67	The East	2013	Zal Batmanglij		17	The English Patient	1996	Anthony Minghella
66	Official Secrets	2019	Gavin Hood		16	Mission: Impossible: Fallout	2018	Christopher McQuarrie
65	Lust, Caution	2007	Ang Lee		15	The Conversation	1974	Francis Ford Coppola
64	Sneakers	1992	Phil Alden Robinson		14	House of Flying Daggers	2004	Yimou Zhang
63	Fair Game	2010	Doug Liman		13	Stalag 17	1953	Billy Wilder
62	Confessions of a Dangerous Mind	2002	George Clooney		12	Goldfinger	1964	Guy Hamilton
61	Charlie Wilson's War	2007	Mike Nichols		11	The Bourne Ultimatum	2007	Paul Greengrass
60	Kingsman: The Secret Service	2014	Matthew Vaughn		10	Letters from Iwo Jima	2006	Clint Eastwood
59	Three Days of the Condor	1975	Sydney Pollack		9	Zero Dark Thirty	2012	Kathryn Bigelow
58	GoldenEye	1995	Martin Campbell		8	Le Petit Soldat	1963	Jean-Luc Godard
57	Walk on Water	2004	Eytan Fox		7	Barry Lyndon	1975	Stanley Kubrick
56	Marcel Proust's Time Regained	1999	Raoul Ruiz		6	The Departed	2006	Martin Scorsese
55	Where Eagles Dare	1968	Brian G.		5	Duck Soup	1933	Leo McCarey
54	Top Secret!	1984	Jim Abrahams, Zucker Bros.		4	The Lives of Others	2006	Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
53	A Most Wanted Man	2014	Anton Corbijn		3	Notorious	1946	Alfred Hitchcock
52	The Spy Gone North	2018	Yoon Jong-bin		2	Pan's Labyrinth	2006	Guillermo del Toro
51	X-Men: First Class	2011	Matthew Vaughn		1	North by Northwest	1959	Alfred Hitchcock
	The 39 Steps	1935	Alfred Hitchcock			Topaz	1969	Alfred Hitchcock
	Day of the Jackal	1973	Fred Zinnemann			Riddle of the Sands	1979	ony Maylam
	The Ipcress File	1965	Sidney J Furie			Casablanca	1842	Michael Curtiz
	The Manchurian Candidate	1962	John Frankenheimer			Dark of the Sun	1968	Jack Cardiff

For worst movie, I seem to recall Our Man Flint (1966), directed by Daniel Mann, was embarrassingly awful.

What is your take? Enquiring spies want to know.

---

Check out Prohibition Peepers, a Michael Bracken anthology.

No Sex, Please, We're Skittish

by Eve Fisher

"If you mention sex at an AA meeting, even the non-smokers light up."
--Father Tom, "Learning to Live With Crazy People"

Agatha Christie

And so do a lot of mystery writers and readers.  There are those who write and/or love cozies, and want everything as asexual as they think Agatha Christie was.  Except, of course, that if you actually read your Agatha Christie, there's a lot of hot stuff going on:  In AT BERTRAM'S HOTEL, Ladislaw Malinowski is sleeping with both Elvira Blake and her mother Bess Sedgwick, and that fact alone is one of the major drivers of the plot.  In SAD CYPRESS, Roddy Welman's sudden, overwhelming attraction to Mary Gerrard makes everything homicidal possible.  And, in at least three novels, a man's lust for one woman, combined with his lust for money, makes it possible for him to marry and murder a rich wife.

Then there's the noir crowd:  

“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”
― Raymond Chandler, FAREWELL, MY LOVELY

“I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake.”
― James M. Cain, DOUBLE INDEMNITY

Brigid O'Shaughnessy: “I haven't lived a good life. I've been bad, worse than you could know.”
Sam Spade: “You know, that's good, because if you actually were as innocent as you pretend to be, we'd never get anywhere.”
― Dashiell Hammett, THE MALTESE FALCON

In noir, EVERYTHING is about sex.  That and greed.  But mostly sex, and often violent sex. (Prime examples are probably the "rip me" scene of James M. Cain's THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE - and Mickey Spillane's VENGEANCE IS MINE, in which - and I think it's the first chapter - he beats a woman before having his way with her and she loves it all.)  The noir guys all moon over the virgins (Walter Huff over his victim's daughter; Mike Hammer over Velda), but the women who obsess them are anything but. And so of course they hurt them, twist them, torture them, betray them, all of the above.  Truth is, after a long day in noir-land, you want to yell at them, "Try somewhere else besides a bar to meet women!   Buy the girl some flowers!  Try to stay sober for ten minutes!" but it's all a waste of breath.  (Except, apparently, to Nick Charles who got a clue and a rich wife.)

And spies...

Spy stories, of course, depend on global locales, tech wizardry, constant weapons, supervillains, and a high body count for both sex and death.   Women, women, women, of all ethnicities, although Russian spies are a perennial favorite.  (Is it the accent, or the idea of nudity and fur?)  I just read a novel in which the male American spy and the female Russian spy were mutually obsessed, madly, madly in love/lust/etc., to the point where I really thought that the cover should be of her holding him against her exceptionally large chest, hair flowing like a female Fabio...  Anyway, sex drives these plots as well, no matter what the spy or the supervillain think, because - besides providing objects of rescue, thus securing another reason for the ensuing sex - 90% of the time at least one of those women is going to save the male spy from certain death. The game is to figure out which one by, say, page five.  

Horror.  Sex = death.  The survivor's a virgin.  What more can I say?  

So, to all of those who say that mysteries are all about cerebral detection, and that there isn't much place for sex in them - WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?  

As Oscar Wilde once said, “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”  

You could look it up...

Go Away, Space Angel! I'm Trying to Write Crime

by Melodie Campbell

A funny thing happened on the way to the crime book: it became a comic sci-fi spy novella.

That’s the frustrating thing about being a fiction writer.  Sometimes you don’t pick your characters – they pick you.

I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, when…no, that’s not how it happened.

It was far worse.

“Write a spy novel!” said the notable crime reviewer (one of that rare breed who still has a newspaper column.) We were yapping over a few drinks last spring.  “A funny one. Modesty Blaise meets Maxwell Smart, only in modern day, of course.”

“Sure!” I said, slurping Pinot by the $16 glass.  After all, crime is my thing.  I was weaned on Agatha Christie.  I had 40 crime short stories and 5 crime books published to date.  This sounded like the perfect 'next series' to write.

And I intended to.  Truly I did.  I tried all summer. I even met with a former CSIS operative to get the scoop on the spy biz (think CIA, but Canada – yes, he was polite.)    

Wrote for two months solid.  The result was…kinda flat.  (I blame the Pinot.  Never take up a book-writing dare with a 9 oz. glass of Pinot in your hand. Ditto good single malt.  THAT resulted in a piece of erotica that shall forever be known under a different name…  But I digress.)

Back to the crime book.  I started to hate it.  

Then, in the middle of the night (WHY does this always happens in the middle of the night?) a few characters started popping up.  Colourful, fun characters, from another time. They took my mind by siege.  “GO AWAY,” I told them. “I’m trying to write a crime book!”

They didn’t.  It was a criminal sit-in.  They wouldn’t leave until I agreed to write their tale.

So the modern day spy novel became a futuristic spy novel.  Modesty Blaise runs a bar on a space-station, so to speak.  Crime in Space, with the kind of comedy you might expect from a descendent of The Goddaughter.

Two more months spent in feverish writing.  Another two in rewrites.  Then another, to convince my publisher that the project had legs.

CODE NAME: GYPSY MOTH is the result.  Yet another crossing the genres escapade.

Written by me, and a motley crew of night visitors.

Now hopefully they will keep it down in there so I can sleep.

CODE NAME: GYPSY MOTH

“Comedy and Space Opera – a blast to read” (former editor Distant Suns magazine)

“a worthy tribute to Douglas Adams”  (Cathy Astolfo, award-winning author)

It isn't easy being a female barkeep in the final frontier...especially when you’re also a spy!

Nell Romana loves two things: the Blue Angel Bar, and Dalamar, a notorious modern-day knight for hire.  Too bad he doesn't know she is actually an undercover agent.  When Dalamar is called away on a routine job, Nell uncovers a rebel plot to overthrow the Federation. She has to act fast and alone. 

Then the worst happens.  Her cover is blown…

Buy link AMAZON
Buy link SMASHWORDS

The Toronto Sun called her Canada’s “Queen of Comedy.”  Library Journal compared her to Janet Evanovich.  Melodie Campbell got her start writing standup.  She has over 200 publications and nine awards for fiction.  Code Name: Gypsy Moth (Imajin Books) is her eighth book.

John Buchan: The Power House

Hey folks!  Rob here to tell you we are pleased as can be to welcome a new blogger to the second Wednesday of the month slot.  David Edgerley Gates lives in New Mexico and has had a ton of stories published in Alfred Hitchcock's and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines.  His work has been  nominated for both the Edgar and Shamus Awards.  He is probably best known for his "noir westerns" about Placido Geist.  We look forward to hearing from David for many months to come...


by David Edgerley Gates

John Buchan is probably most celebrated and best remembered for THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS, and more for the Hitchcock picture, not the novel itself.  (It’s a good movie, even if Hitchcock changed the ending of the book.)

  

Buchan was an interesting guy, who served in the Boer War and was actually a spy, later, in the First World War.  He was ambitious in politics, but too liberal for the Tories, and too conservative for Winston Churchill---like Churchill, he was mothballed between the wars---and eventually wound up Governor-General of Canada, a more or less ceremonial post.  He died in 1940.  

Aside from THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS, he wrote some three dozen novels, some of them thrillers, many of them historical romance.  His titles were terrific, THE BLANKET OF THE DARK, THE GAP IN THE CURTAIN, A PRINCE OF THE CAPTIVITY, a book I always thought to be about Lawrence of Arabia.  

He wrote them fast and loose.  He called them penny-dreadfuls, or ‘shockers,’ and they were, depending overmuch on coincidence and accident, but they have enormous momentum, and on occasion genuine emotional power: the scene in MR. STANDFAST, for example, when Hannay encounters the Kaiser himself on a train platform, and sees the man, weighted down by his responsibility for this cruel folly.  Buchan understood the primary job of a storyteller, don’t spin your wheels.

THE POWER HOUSE was published in 1916, a few years into the war.  The character of the villain is almost certainly influenced by Nietzsche, as is, we might well imagine, Professor Moriarty.  Conan Doyle and Buchan, as well as Kipling, another extremely invested writer, in the sense of believing deeply in the social fabric, although Kipling was by far the better craftsman, were conservatives of an older order, keepers of the flame. 

THE POWER HOUSE could be seen as a parable, but I don’t believe Buchan meant it that way.  A century later, a century that saw Hitler and Stalin, delusional maniacs who murdered millions of their own people, and many others, the book is still frightening in its prescience.  Buchan’s frame of reference, though, is different from ours.  We know the slaughter of the Great War, the Holocaust, or the genocides of Africa and the Balkan wars, so we look at a novel like THE POWER HOUSE, or PRESTER JOHN, through a lens of historical irony.  Buchan was in ignorance of the horrific future.  But he saw it in its lineaments.  THE POWER HOUSE is Hitler, unfortunately not strangled in birth, Yeats' rough and slouching beast.  Buchan had the gift, or curse, of foresight.  Cassandra, unheeded. 

    

THE POWER HOUSE, essentially, is about a guy who doesn’t think the rules apply to him.  This basic model of the sociopath is a character Buchan anticipated well before Hannibal Lecter, but one we’ve come to know.  Buchan, and Conan Doyle, got in on the ground floor.  Fu Manchu, or Dr. Mabuse, came on stage later, and they were avatars of an evil that could already be seen, off-stage.  The genius of THE POWER HOUSE lies in imagination.  The brute force of reality caught up with it.  Buchan saw the Fascists and Nazism lying in wait, tinder waiting for a match.  He was a voice in the wilderness. 

John Buchan, or Arthur Conan Doyle, or Rudyard Kipling, might in all justice be called apologists for British imperialism.  I don’t think, however, that they countenanced a philosophy that led to the death camps.  Yes, the Boer War, which was a slippery slope, with the British the first to embrace internment of non-combatant women and children.  Buchan was there, one of Milner’s acolytes.  Perhaps it suggested something else to him, that this way lies madness.  And it did. 

Much of Buchan’s work dates badly, because he’s essentially a 19^th-century guy, with a late-Victorian cultural and emotional mindset.  There’s little graphic violence in his stories, and of course no sex at all.  But the men of his generation came to be marked by the Great War, with its unthinkable slaughters, Ypres, the Somme, Verdun, the introduction of tank warfare, the use of poison gas.  There were inspiring heroics, but at horrific human cost.   

The world that came after, as Paul Fussell points out, was very different, different in both temperament and imagination.  The key to THE POWER HOUSE is that Buchan foresees not the horrors to come, or even their political foundations, but the fertility of an individual capacity for evil, the earth from which the dragon’s teeth would spring.