Spy fiction

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 Dreyfus Affair contributed to public 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... full article at wikipedia