Superspy

The genre of spy fiction—sometimes called political thriller or spy thriller or sometimes shortened simply to spy-fi—arose before World War I at about the same time that the first modern intelligence agencies were formed. The Dreyfuss Affair contributed to pubic interest in the subject. For a whole decade, an affair involving the operations of spies and counter-spies held center stage in the politics of a major European country, and was widely and continually reported all over the world. The details of German Intelligence having an agent in the French Army's General Staff and getting through him important military secrets, and of French counter-intelligence riposting by getting a charwoman to go through the wastebaskets of the German Embassy in Paris, were the staff of daily news - and natually inspired fictional tales involving similar themes.

Seldom has this literary field met with critical acclaim, although insightful, literate, and politically important works have been published in it. At the same time, it has enjoyed great popular success.

Readership waned only in the lull following the end of the Cold War (the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989). The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States reignited interest and have reversed that trend. Some pundits are referring to the current era as the Decade of the Spy and pointing to the renaissance in spy fiction and film as two of the indicators of this.