Buckton has written a comprehensive historical and thematic study of the rise and development of what he terms 'spy fiction.' As he points out in the introduction, such fictions have always responded to temporal political and cultural currents and have 'consistently played a role in imagining, describing, elaborating, and indeed defining the identity of the ‘other’—the foremost ‘enemy’ and national rival'.... Buckton considers nearly all the most celebrated authors of the genre—Joseph Conrad, William Le Queux, Eric Ambler, John Buchan, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, John le Carré, and Stella Rimington, to name just a few. Directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, and Carol Reed are also discussed. The book's nine chapters chart the development of the amateur spy, the professional operative, the Cold War warriors, and the Soviet threat and fall of the Berlin Wall. One of the most provocative chapters is the last, 'Reinventing the Spy Story after the Cold War,' in which Buckton considers the absence of specific enemy states and the increased reliance on faceless technology to gather information and exact retribution. The book is thoroughly researched, well written, and judicious in its assessments. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

Choice Reviews

Oliver S. Buckton’s Espionage in British Fiction and Film since 1900 is an ambitious and comprehensive analysis of the most significant spy novels and movies of the last century. . . . Buckton and Lassner [author of Espionage and Exile: Fascism and Anti-fascism in British Spy Fiction and Film] each make important contributions to our understanding of how spy fiction not only depicts the “enemy” but also productively intervenes in political discourse. . . If spy fiction in the post-Cold War era has, as Buckton discusses at the end of his book, evolved to take on the threat posed by international terrorism, perhaps its future lies in its potential to counter the menace of a resurgent authoritarianism at home.

Twentieth-Century Literature