Tips, reference material on spy novels?

Well, you won't get any realism out of Sean Connery or Daniel Craig. Reading the novels is a bit better, but if you want any realism, choose carefully. Tom Clancy is much better, though, and gets more right.

I found CIA and FBI biographies to be much more helpful as reference material than other people's fiction. Not that it is all true, biographies do contain fiction,but most of it is real.

Spycatcher by former senior MI5 officer Peter Wright might be worth a read.

Helix said:

Spycatcher by former senior MI5 officer Peter Wright might be worth a read.

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Clancy (and his ghosters) are heavy on techno-babble, but that just might be me. You may also find Jim Hougan's "Spooks" to be of interest.
Good luck!

Fiction, but good tradecraft spy-wise:
Agents of Innocence by David Ignatius
SIRO by David Ignatius

Some nonfiction to begin with:
Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hansen Betrayed America
Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames
Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy
Spymaster, by Oleg Kalugin
The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB
If you're not already familiar with how the CIA is organized, Ronald Kessler's Inside the CIA is a good reference, possibly dated because it's been a long time since I've read it, but the CIA hasn't changed radically.

Hi, just seen the thread. I write Roman Spy Novels, like you I have can't/don't have gadgets etc. just a soldier who is quite handy with a sword and his fists.

Two books have helped me a lot:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Agents-Pocket-Manual-ebook/dp/B00ABMQGFK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416260587&sr=8-1&keywords=the+secret+agents+pocket+manual

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spy-Eyewitness-Guides-Richard-Platt/dp/0751360767/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416260638&sr=8-1&keywords=spy+eyewitness

Also, can't recommend John Le Carre's novels highly enough.

Code Breakers by Kahn is excellent. The details are old but the philosophy and reasoning isn't.

Secret Missions by Admiral Zacharias is an amazingly good book.

The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea by one of my personal hero's, John Pina Craven. The man was the axle around which all undersea espionage rotated during the cold war. There is a lot to learn from the philosophy behind what was done that's applicable to building plots. I think Clancy must have consulted with Craven.

Flynn's books are pretty good.

The other thing to look at is how government bureaucracy operates in apparent continuous conflict with it's alleged agenda as well as the politicians 24 hour news cycle needs on a daily basis vs the slow drip of information - there is room for a lot of 'story' there too.

Fitch

Namatu said:

Some nonfiction to begin with:
Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hansen Betrayed America
Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames
Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy
Spymaster, by Oleg Kalugin
The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB
If you're not already familiar with how the CIA is organized, Ronald Kessler's Inside the CIA is a good reference, possibly dated because it's been a long time since I've read it, but the CIA hasn't changed radically.

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I've read all but one of those, and I'll agree that it's a good list.

Though there were some extravagantly Bondian spies in real life - Richard Sorge and Kim Philby, for example - most spies lead very dull lives in order to keep their cover secure, and their work is mostly tedious and boring. At least, it is if they are successful.

One thing to think about: almost any electronic communication can be easily intercepted by government, and nowadays private or privatized, organizations. The old tradecraft techniques - Morse code over short wave, dead drops (think of the volume of data you could put on a micro-SD card!), etc. aren't dead; they're even more important now than before. The main difference is that instead of calling up the office on his cellular phone, your character is limited to a once a week or once a month dead drop, or very low bandwidth radio, or even personal ads in the newspaper or Craigslist.

Dave Williams said:

most spies lead very dull lives in order to keep their cover secure, and their work is mostly tedious and boring. At least, it is if they are successful.

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This x1000

If you want realism don't forget the endless travel, crappy hotels, sometimes having to change every night, and you better have a good mental map of the area, street names can be nonexistence and staring at GPS is a great way to stick out.

Also knowing the lesser of two evils when in a potentially hostile country/world, something I rarely see getting covered. For example, in Egypt you want the military over the police, in Iraq it depended on what part of the country you're in, the Kurds were going to be your best choice, in Syria, well that doesn't matter anymore, fixers are selling people out.

I'm just thinking of the fact that the world is grey and too many authors paint with either a black or white stroke.

Steve Jackson Games has published a number of sourcebooks for their GURPS RPG over the years which are surprisingly useful and informative, as they make an effort to contract writers who are knowledgeable about the subject and who can put together a respectable bibliography.

Specifically, you might find GURPS Espionage, GURPS Covert Ops, and, to a lesser extent, GURPS Special Ops useful.

Callegro said:

I'm just thinking of the fact that the world is grey and too many authors paint with either a black or white stroke.

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I'm fairly well burned out on ambiguous grey antiheroes with moral conflicts. It's sort of nice to see a character who knows where he stands and where he's going.

I've read too many novels where I wound up rooting for the bad guy, because at least he knew what he was doing and why...

I miss cold war spy novels

Dave Williams said:

I'm fairly well burned out on ambiguous grey antiheroes with moral conflicts. It's sort of nice to see a character who knows where he stands and where he's going.

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Sorry, I wasn't being very clear in that post, I was talking more about secondary characters. In the Middle East you could never really trust anyone 100%, you couldn't know if this time they would sell you out and you'd wind up in another beheading video.

Every time you interacted with someone or meet someone or got in a car, you had to judge and asses the person and the situation. Is this guy nervous, because if word gets out that he is helping a Westerner then him and his family will be killed, or is he nervous because we're going to be having a run in with AQ?

In eastern Turkey military checkpoints were usually better then police checkpoints, doesn't mean that you can't have a misunderstanding and wind up with some guy pointing a gun in your face (hint if you can only think of Kurdish words, and you don't really know too much Turkish, pick option C: German!).

Don't get me wrong, I've traveled the world and for the most part people are good, but there are times you wouldn't mind having a squad of your own backing you up.

On Amazon, you could also check out Inside the CIA by Ronald Kessler

Eddy Rod-Kubry said:

I'd like it to be less Sean Connery and more Daniel Craig-like.

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You might want to take a look at some of the novels in Adam Hall's "Quiller" series. Hall's main character, Quiller, is a very Daniel Craig-ish British spy operating during both the Cold War and post-Cold War years. (The series lasted from 1965 through 1995). Some of the stand-out works are The Berlin Memorandum, Quiller Solitaire, Quiller Bamboo, and The Ninth Directive.

I also recommend The Tears of Autumn by Charles McCarry, a former CIA operative turned novelist. This one's about...get this...a CIA agent trying to solve the assassination of John F. Kennedy!

I just saw this Salon article and thought of this thread. Some great starting points in here:

America's new golden age of black ops: Inside our secret global war abroad - http://www.salon.com/2015/01/25/the_golden_age_of_black_ops_americas_secret_global_war_abroad_partner/

For the best fictional representation of the business ever, check out The Sandbaggers. (British TV show. There are DVDs.)

You might also want to check out the International Spy Museum.