“Intelligence work has one moral law—it is justified by results.”
-John Le Carre, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. (10)
Spying is a difficult business. Writing about spies with any accuracy is also an incredibly difficult business; this is why the foundational giants of the genre from Ian Fleming to John Le Carre have been ex-intelligence. Without that background, it can be easy to misunderstand that the ability to be a spy comes from the tradecraft and the training. It’s common among writers to build the character first, then give them their skill set. While this will work for a vast number of different character archetypes, functional spies require a fairly specific outlook and it is developed by a specific type of background though that comes from a generic set of circumstances.
Spies can’t be good people and that’s okay, because good people can’t be spies.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2aJjRPT