Slap on your sunglasses, and buckle on your trenchcoats. There's a growing trend in fiction that will take over bestseller charts within the next couple of years. The genre is espionage novels - "international thrillers."

You think I'm wrong? Without a natural interest base, no trend can begin much less burgeon. So let's take a look at real life.

This is the Decade of the Spy, and here's why. Not even during the Cold War was the intelligence community as intensely in the public eye as it has been since 9/11. The under-thirtysomethings are so entranced that applications to the CIA have never been higher. Google lists more than 30,000 entries under"spy club," "espionage club," and "spy fans," while the media is saturated with the latest revelations about our covert agencies - and embarrassing
investigations

With loud sturm and drang, we're going through the most radical restructuring of our intelligence community since the CIA was fashioned from the ashes of the OSS after World War II. The result is a brand-new espionage czar - the Director of National Intelligence - orchestrating all of our covert agencies, with explosive fallout that included the resignation of
Porter Goss from his post as director of Central Intelligence, and his replacement, Michael Hayden, being shuffled off just a few months later to yet another security position in the government.

The public's deep interest is reflected in fiction. Spies appear with astonishing regularity on big and small screens. Hit movies like "The Good Shepherd," "Syriana," "The Constant Gardener," and "Match Point" garner award nominations, while TV series like "24" become near icons, and
remarkably quickly.

Sales of spy novels have done a complete sales reversal from the 1990s when publishing declared anything espionage as dead as the Cold War. Today, editors actively seek out books in the field.

The enticement is so great that long-time professionals from the intelligence community like Richard A. Clarke ("The Scorpion's Gate"), who was White House counterterrorism chief to several presidents, and Stella Rimington ("At Risk"), who headed Britain's MI5, entered the field with first novels that became best-sellers.

Others who successfully plow this literary field, all relatively new, all with exploding sales, include Alex Berenson ("The Faithful Spy"), Barry Eisler ("The Last Assassin"), Vince Flynn ("Memorial Day"), Brian Haig ("The President's Assassin"), Christopher Reich ("The Patriots Club"), and Brad Thor ("Takedown").

The Decade of the Spy is both fascinating and perilous - the stuff of great drama. No wonder not only authors but readers are riveted. Prepare yourself for an explosion in the field's popularity, and remember you read it here first.

— Gayle Lynds

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