The Oxford Book of Spy Stories

Reviewed: May 17, 2007
By: edited by Michael Cox
Publisher: Oxford University Press
356 pages, $20.50

Ten years old and still available in both hardcover and paperback, this volume in the “Oxford Book of ...” series gives you 28 entries in the venerable history of the spy story, beginning with Ambrose Bierce and Baroness Orczy (of Scarlet Pimpernel fame) and continuing on through Edgar Wallace (who also scripted the original “King Kong”), John Buchan (a former Governor General and author of The Thirty-nine Steps), as well as Ian Fleming (a James Bond short story), Len Deighton (of the masterful Bernard Samson novels) and Graham Greene.

These writers blazed the trails that later scribes like Greg Rucka have followed. It you like the genre and want to know more about it, as well as enjoy a good read, this is a fine book to have around.

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