Quote

It's a thrilling world, and people really like stories about secrets, which is the essence of a spy drama.

We have learned in recent years to translate almost all of political life in terms of conspiracy. And the spy novel, as never before, really, has come into its own.

What I really found was that the one similarity between 'Covert Affairs' and 'Fair Game' is a deep love and admiration and fascination with the home life of a spy.

It's part of a writer's profession, as it's part of a spy's profession, to prey on the community to which he's attached, to take away information - often in secret - and to translate that into intelligence for his masters, whether it's his readership or his spy masters. And I think that both professions are perhaps rather lonely.

The world has changed, the CIA is having to change, and again, the challenge for someone like me as a spy novelist is to write realistically about where they're actually going.

The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story.

I've known several spies who have wanted to become novelists. And novelists who became spies, of course.

It is my writing dilemma. The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story.

I began writing fiction because it was the only way to tell all the intricacies of a real-life spy story.

A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.