{"id":6724,"date":"2017-07-17T06:30:18","date_gmt":"2017-07-17T10:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6724"},"modified":"2017-07-27T08:09:50","modified_gmt":"2017-07-27T12:09:50","slug":"spy-fic-freshly-relevant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6724","title":{"rendered":"Spy Fic: “Freshly Relevant”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Spy\"

photo: Joshua Rappeneker, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

The old saw \u201ctruth is stranger than fiction\u201d was never more apt than when applied to the Trump Administration. Back in February, its bull-in-the-China-shop approach to national security inspired me to create a recommended reading list<\/a>\u2014as a public service [!]\u2014comprising a few thrillers that would illustrate how espionage works and how to behave in order to protect our country and its secrets. The books on that list provide a much more exciting and vivid curriculum than tedious daily briefings, for sure. Apparently, my post came too late for Don Jr. Ah, well, authors keep trying. And the parallels keep emerging.<\/p>\n

Last Friday Dwyer Murphy<\/a> in LitHub<\/em> said he also finds spy literature \u201cfreshly relevant.\u201d And apparently, Senator Tom Cotton agrees<\/a>. Murphy’s essay, \u201c10 Great Spy Thrillers That Could be New York Times<\/em> Headlines\u201d starts like this:<\/p>\n

The cast of characters is almost too much to believe: a Russian pop star, a British tabloid veteran, an attorney with mysterious ties to the Kremlin, a Moscow-funded lobbyist running a White House campaign, a real estate scion married into political power, and the son of the soon-to-be President of the United States.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"spy,

(photo: David Lytle, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n

Murphy contends that you can get \u201cuncannily close\u201d to the strategies and schemes filling 2017 newspapers\u2014and understand how the U.S.-Russia relationship got to be what it was and is\u2014all while lounging in your beach chair with some pretty exciting novels. I remember wondering what John le Carr\u00e9 would do after the Cold War ended. Now we know. Trot out his backlist.<\/p>\n

Here are Murphy\u2019s picks that I\u2019ve read too:<\/p>\n