Intelligence Desk
Reporting, analysis, history, and fiction
from the world of espionage.
From the breaking developments to enduring Cold War
stoies, from tradecraft to technology-insighe and
contect that deepen your understanding of the
world behind the fiction.
The Fiction Desk
Authors, books, characters and spy fiction culture.
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Quantum Computing and the Future of Espionage
Somewhere right now, intelligence agencies are almost certainly recording encrypted traffic they cannot read, and storing it. Not because they expect to crack it tomorrow, but because they're betting on being able to crack it eventually. The strategy has a…
October 23, 2026
The Ship That Knew Too Much
October 22, 2026
Numbers Stations
October 22, 2026
The Death of the Fake Passport? Biometrics and Modern Espionage
October 22, 2026
The Brush Pass: Simple, Fast and Surprisingly Difficult
October 22, 2026
Writing a Convincing Mole
Few characters are more at home in espionage fiction than the mole.
A mole sits inside an intelligence service, government agency, military organization, corporation, or other institution while secretly serving an adversary. Unlike the outside spy trying to penetrate a secure organization, the mole already possesses what the adversary wants most: access.
That makes the mole extraordinarily useful to an intelligence service.
It also makes the mole extraordinarily useful to a novelist.
September 22, 2026
What Makes a Spy Novel a Spy Novel?
Alexander Hale | Intelligence Editor, ISDb
Few characters are more at home in espionage fiction than the mole.
A mole sits inside an intelligence service, government agency, military organization, corporation, or other institution while secretly serving an adversary. Unlike the outside spy trying to penetrate a secure organization, the mole already possesses what the adversary wants most: access.
That makes the mole extraordinarily useful to an intelligence service.
It also makes the mole extraordinarily useful to a novelist.
September 21, 2026
The 25 Spy Novels Every Espionage Reader Should Know
Alexander Hale | Intelligence Editor, ISDb
There is no definitive list of the 25 greatest spy novels.
That is worth admitting at the outset.
Espionage fiction has been evolving for more than a century, and its best books are remarkably different from one another. Some celebrate adventure. Others dismantle it. Some follow professional intelligence officers; others place ordinary people in situations they barely understand. The spy may be the hero, the villain, the traitor, the bureaucrat, or the unfortunate person standing between two gov
September 14, 2026