You only need to take a stroll through a bookstore to realize that the spy novel has returned. “It never really left, but it is evident that it has re-emerged strongly,” says Miriam Vall, editor of John le Carré and Agatha Christie, who associates this fact with the fact that the genre has always been linked to political and national news. and international, “and now it is very busy. Putin gives a lot of opportunity to invent many geopolitical plots.” The audiovisual “is also a clear influence on the literature that arrives, and the reason why there are more and more series and films with espionage plots is surely the same.” The latest, Argylle, hit the big screen this Friday and stars an author of spy novels.
But have the new stories that arrive changed anything compared to those that made the genre popular during the Cold War period? In general terms, both the publishing world and authors believe so, among them the British Charles Cumming, who emphasizes that “in the old days, the antagonists used to be KGB officers. Russians still have a role to play in contemporary fiction, but more nationalities have joined them. The most important change has been the threat from Islamist groups such as Al Qaeda, Hamas and ISIS. “September 11th changed espionage and, therefore, spy fiction.”
Another aspect to take into account is that “women gain prominence. They are no longer the mere companion of the spy. Many times they themselves are and, in the event that this is not the case, they have a decisive role,” reflects the writer María Dueñas (Puertollano, 1964), who in 2009 revolutionized the Spanish literary scene with The Time Between Coutures, whose The protagonist, Sira, is a dressmaker who, “because of the times she lives in,” ends up collaborating with the secret services with clandestine messages to her employers. “At that time, at least in Spain, a character involved in something like that was not common. Now this is changing. He was always a cold man, not very empathetic, who could jump off any building without getting a scratch, he had no family and he didn’t eat either, and this last thing was what worried me the most.
Ian Fleming’s heirs are no strangers to changing times and, in part for that reason, they gave the go-ahead for, for the first time, a woman, Kim Sherwood, to write a new trilogy about James Bond, with Double or Nothing (Rock Editorial) as the first volume. She “she wanted to not only create powerful female characters, but heroines with whom readers can see themselves reflected,” the author acknowledges. With this I do not want to undermine the ‘Bond girls’. But most of us prefer to rescue and not be rescued.” Regarding agent 007, she recognizes that he “is an icon, but he is much more interesting as a human being.”
Technology is another of the pillars that support current spy novels. “Nowadays you can monitor in a very different way with satellite and eavesdropping systems, through mobile phones, credit cards, and someone can even spy remotely from the couch at home. Our image of Smiley, the great manipulator of informants and agents, as well as classic black and white spy films, have little to do with today’s drones and cyberespionage,” says Salamandra editor Anik Lapointe, who cites as For example, the novel A Very Long Night, by Dov Alfon, which “stages a confrontation between the Chinese mafia and the Israeli intelligence services in Paris, despite the fact that, in reality, the fight takes place thousands of kilometers away, in distant offices, who initiate illegal eavesdropping, use new technologies such as spyware and satellite tracking to locate, intimidate and defeat the enemy.”
Carlos Zanón, writer and director of the BCNegra festival, which begins tomorrow and will run until February 11, broadens his vision and remembers that new technologies allow not only the agent to spy, but also the neighbor or anyone else. foot. “Every day we give information about ourselves for free on social networks, and this is easy for it to be turned against us.”
This is what GPS (AdN) talks about, the new novel by Lucie Rico (Perpignan, 1988), which, despite not being a typical spy novel, the protagonist becomes something similar after the disappearance of her best friend, as she will try to follow their trail thanks to the locations that someone unknown sends to their phone. “There is a clear connection with espionage in the broad sense. “It talks about the relationship between technology and everyday life in which we spy on each other,” advances the label’s director, Fernando Paz.
Humor has also increased in the new narratives. Eduardo Mendoza (Barcelona, ??1943), for example, shows off his crazy ingenuity in Three Enigmas for the Organization (Seix Barral), in which the agents of that entity must solve a murder in a hotel on the Rambla. Another author who uses humor is Mick Herron (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1963). “I’m not too concerned that the most devoted readers of the genre will be disconcerted because I have never been conscious of adhering to or moving away from the conventions it establishes. I only write about the characters that interest me,” the author of Caballos slowos admits to this newspaper.
The former intelligence agent and now also a writer Fernando San Agustín welcomes the stories being adapted to 2024 although, “for it to be completely credible, the cardboard should not be seen. And the glamour, although it has been reduced, is not such. “The agents are just another official.” But in books the imagination is allowed to fly to unexpected places.
