Spies don’t fall short

Agents of Treachery: Spy Stories

For decades, and driven largely by Cold War dread, espionage fiction dominated bestseller lists. Writers like John le Carré, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene and Len Deighton captivated readers with exposés of life’s fraught underbelly; a tense, deceptive world where good and evil wage perpetual war but where the dividing lines have blurred beyond distinction.

Spying has rarely been explored by the short story, probably because it was considered too restrictive a format for the convoluted double- and triple-cross plot-building that distinguishes the genre. Agents of Treachery goes a considerable step towards dispelling such notions. Proving that, in capable hands, such limitations as brevity can not only be overcome but turned to the writer’s advantage, Otto Penzler has gathered 14 new stories by some of the genre’s top guns, including David Morrell, Joseph Finder and Gayle Lynds.