ABSTRACT
Cover Stories traces the genealogy of the British spy thriller from its roots in Kipling’s Kim and Conrad’s The Secret Agent through to the contemporary work of writers such as Le Carré and Deighton. In this literary history of a popular genre, intermediate landmarks are provided by Erskine Childers, Buchan, H.C.McNeile (‘Sapper’), Ambler, Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene and Ian Fleming; and its genealogy is traced in terms of symptomatic readings of exemplary texts, set against a background of social and cultural history. Crucial components of this background are elements such as the Empire (whether in crisis or decline), the Depression, and the rise of consumerism. According to the kind of symptomatic reading undertaken here, spy thrillers project a variety of ‘cover stories’ with which to negotiate the fissures and cracks in the prevailing ideologies of their time. The work of Buchan and Erskine Childers, for example, provide ways in which ‘we can unravel the culture of the social-imperialist crisis’ (p. 42).
