Espionage/Thriller
From Sports Reporter to Crime Writer
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Ask me why I created a female sports reporter protagonist and the answer is easy. That’s my background. I intimately know the character’s experiences—the smell of the locker rooms, the chit chat with a camera operator and the adrenaline rush of a newsroom. Ask me why I decided to write a thriller—well, that question stumped…
James Kennedy: “Storytellers are manipulative cult leaders.”
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I missed my chance to be in a cult. In my twenties, a guy on the street handed me a pamphlet to join a “communal farm”—an obvious cult. Nevertheless, I was intrigued: maybe I could enjoy this farm’s bucolic vibes and free love, while shrewdly avoiding any mass suicide, or baby-eating, or barnyard chores. I…
The Secret History of John le Carré’s Career in the Intelligence Services
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‘People believe what they want to believe,’ wrote David to one of his lovers. ‘ALWAYS.’ he was referring to the ‘revelation’ that Graham Greene had continued working for British intelligence into his seventies. ‘No good me telling them that GG was far too drunk to remember anything, & that his residual connections with the Brit…
The Pigeon Tunnel, the New Film About John le Carré, is Intimate and Illuminating
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John le Carré (born David Cornwell) hated giving interviews. “First you invent yourself, then you believe the invention”, he wrote in his autobiography The Pigeon Tunnel. Despite these reservations, Le Carré/Cornwell ended up participating in a documentary about his life. Surprisingly, the resulting film—also called The Pigeon Tunnel, and directed by Errol Morris, feels so…
How Should Fiction Talk About War
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“Does your novel speak to Hamas’s attack on Israel?” I got the question during a podcast interview I was giving to support the launch of my new novel, which is set during the 2006 34-day Hezbollah-Israeli War. My novel came out shortly before Hamas’s October 7 assault on Israel and my interview was a few…
Six Books About Women Working Together
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So often we hear news of some criminally misogynist finally having a #MeToo moment. For most women, these stories are not particularly surprising, given our lived experiences, given what we observe in work and politics and even our homes every day. What is always amazing to me however is the team of women working together…
Five Disturbing Books That Violate Your Sanctuary
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In another life, I’m sure I was a political assassin or, at the very least, a cold-hearted femme fatale who was on the right end of a gun or winning cause. How else to explain my long-standing obsession/fascination with mayhem, gore, and murder most foul? A voracious reader from a tender age, when I wasn’t…
The Best Hotels – and Hotel Bars – in Espionage Fiction
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Bars in grand hotels figure prominently in the canon of spy literature. One of the pleasures I get from reading the novels of Joseph Kanon, Graham Greene and other masters of the spy genre, is that the anonymous guests in the grand hotels come alive with a backstory and confidential business discussed over martinis is…