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called upon to steal, cheat, lie, and kill. Because espionage agents travel all around the world and are
familiar with many other cultures which they often respect, they are not so opinionated, racially or
religiously, as the average United States citizen. Sexual and social relationships that cross racial barriers
would not be thought "abnormal" or even unusual by a spy. Furthermore, the spy has seen, in his job, that
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"moral" behavior is relative and that it rarely accomplishes anything, while Machiavellian techniques
usually lead to the desired results. For this reason, he is not likely to subscribe to any formal religion.
Unrestricted by religious taboos, and his sense of pleasure sharpened by the constant possibility of
sudden death, the spy will usually be sexually liberated. If not, he may be the type of man who finds a
sexual outlet in risking his life and in committing acts of violence. This type rarely makes a satisfactory
protagonist, for the average reader has trouble identifying with him. Whatever the hero's sexual
proclivities, he will never be a moralist who criticizes extramarital and pre-marital relationships, for such
a hidebound attitude would be ludicrously antithetical to everything else he must be in order to survive.
Understand, all of the above are not restrictions of spy story characterizations, so much as fundamental,
common sense requirements. If you are writing about a spy, he must be as much like a spy as you can
make him. When writing about a great musician, you would not say that he had a tin ear. If your lead was
a world-famous surgeon, you wouldn't inform the reader that he was terrified of the sight of blood.
Likewise, a spy's personality must be true to his profession.
Once you've established your characters, you must give long consideration to the background. In a spy
novel, the story will usually be set in a foreign country. You need not have visited Turkey to write of it,
but you should be prepared to think Turkey before writing a word. Study travel and history books, learn
the country's geography, customs, traditions, history, governmental system, family structure, and major
religions. Only when you can name streets and create the mood of a foreign land are you ready to begin.
One of the most common background errors made by the new spy story writer is the misplacement of a
hero in the bureaucracy of counter-intelligence. An FBI agent, for instance, doesn't work in other
countries: he's limited to the borders of the U.S. Similarly, a CIA agent rarely works in the States, for his
duties are more within the sphere of international intrigue. The British agent in another country will not
be from Scotland Yard, but from M.I.6, British equivalent of our Central Intelligence Agency. The
Russian version is the KGB. The famed United States Secret Service is only a branch of the Treasury
Department and is not concerned with espionage, as many new writers think: its sole concern is the
protection of the President, Vice-President, their families, and Presidential candidates/hopefuls. A few
novels (Michael Mason's 71 Hours, Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and almost any of
Philip Atlee's Joe Gaul stories) and a few non-fiction titles (The Game of the Foxes by Ladislas Farago,
most notably) should give the new spy story writer sufficient background data on which to proceed.
Once you've settled on the spy story sub-type of suspense fiction, you will want to decide what sort of
plot you'll develop. Most every spy novel can be fitted into one of the following six plot groups:
Rescuing someone from enemy territory. The protagonist must cross into Russia, East Germany, China,
or some other unfriendly country to rescue a fellow countryman or spy being held by the enemy. In some
cases, the man to be rescued is a leading foreign scientist or political figure who has requested U.S. aid in
leaving his own country and finding political asylum.
Stopping someone from reaching enemy territory. The protagonist must keep a defecting scientist or
fellow spy from reaching his contacts and being whisked into enemy hands.
Stopping the enemy from obtaining vital data. The protagonist must foil enemy plans to obtain
information which will improve their international position usually, information that will increase their
power to wage chemical, biological, nuclear, or psychological warfare.
Stealing data from the enemy. This is a reverse of the third type of plot: the protagonist is assigned to
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retrieve scientific data from the enemy. This form is seldom used, for two reasons: first, American
readers don't like to think of their own spies initiating international trouble by stealing from the enemy,
though, in reality, this is not uncommon; second, the reader likes to think that we have no need to steal
data, because we are more advanced than they are an abysmal misunderstanding of the world, but a
common one.
Stopping the enemy from taking over another country. Again, the average reader doesn't like to think we
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