Licence to Spill is Spybrary's Q&A series in which spy authors are grilled by spy thriller book fans.
Licence to Spill with Alex Gerlis
Welcome to Licence to Spill, Spybrary’s new author Q&A series, where we put spy writers under the spotlight and ask them the questions spy thriller readers really want answered.
First in the interrogation chair is Alex Gerlis, author of thirteen published espionage novels, with his fourteenth, City of Traitors, due out in August. Gerlis is best known for richly researched wartime spy fiction, including The Best of Our Spies, The Swiss Spy, the Richard Prince novels, and his current Double Agent series.
In this conversation, Alex takes us from a lunchtime discovery of Alan Furst at Daunt Books to the origins of The Best of Our Spies, explains why the Second World War remains such irresistible territory for espionage fiction, and shares the research rabbit holes that have shaped his novels — including the surprising fact that civilian flights continued across parts of Europe during the war.
We also talk villains, tradecraft, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Graham Greene, Len Deighton, wartime Europe, reluctant spies, and why Alex thinks Alan Furst deserves more recognition. And yes, he gives us a tease of what’s next in the Double Agent series.
Spy fiction authors interested in featuring in a future Licence to Spill Q&A can email Shane at shane@spybrary.com with Licence to Spill in the subject line.
1. Take us back to the beginning — what was the book or author that made you think, “I want to write spy fiction“? 1a For those new to your work, where do you recommend Spybrary readers start?
I’ve always loved espionage fiction – I’d buy every John le Carré novel as soon as it came out in hardback even when I couldn’t afford it. But sometime in the mid-late/90s I was on a BBC training course and a friend and I nipped out to Daunts on Marylebone High Street at lunchtime and she introduced me to Alan Furst and that opened up a new world for me. I can’t remember which book I read first because I was so gripped by them, I must have read five or six in very quick succession.
Around that time I had the idea for an espionage novel as I’d come up with a plot after covering the Fiftieth Anniversary of D-Day for the BBC. So the two events came together. Reading Furst and appreciating his ability to draw memorable characters and convey the atmosphere of Nazi occupied Europe and the novel which was forming in my mind. It took a while, but eventually I got it out of my mind and onto paper and that was how The Best of Our Spies came about. It’s my longest book, but also the one optioned for TV, and I’d recommend new readers start there.
For me, nothing can compete with WW2 in terms of the drama and the absolute terror and depravity it brought about. I think the scope for a novelist seeking to base their books on real events during the war is enormous.
Alex Gerlis
2. Alex, walk us through your research process. Are you an “immerse yourself for months before writing” person? Do you visit and scope out locations?
I’m definitely an immerse myself for months person: I spend much of that time thinking about the characters, letting them develop into ‘real’ people. I love the research – for me, research opens up great plot lines and also provides the authentic historical context in which I set all my novels. I read maybe a dozen non-fiction books for each novel and constantly refer to my collection of maps and guidebooks and yes, I try to visit as many locations as possible. I’m just back from a book festival in New York City but allowed a couple of days there for research for my next novel.
3. Which era of espionage is your absolute favourite era to write in, and what makes it so irresistible?
Unquestionably the Second World War. Of my thirteen published titles (number fourteen is out in August), all have been set in that period other than The Berlin Spies which was split between the war and the Seventies (Baader Meinhoff) and Every Spy a Traitor which is set in mainly Germany and the Soviet Union in the mid/late 1930s. For me, nothing can compete with WW2 in terms of the drama and the absolute terror and depravity it brought about. I think the scope for a novelist seeking to base their books on real events during the war is enormous.
4. Which spy fiction book do you wish you had written yourself — and why?
Tinker, Tailor Soldier Spy… I think it’s the ultimate spy book in the way it draws the reader in so deeply into the story yet leaves them mystified as to the identity of the traitor and it’s so beautifully written. Also, From Russia, with Love: Fleming’s fifth Bond novel, and I think it’s his best one and those books really did create a new genre, even if they read now as very much of their time.
5. What are you reading right now — and what's the one book in your TBR pile you keep meaning to get to but haven't yet?
I’m currently reading A Private Affair by the Italian writer, Beppe Fenoglio. It turns out he was a close friend of my Italian son-in law’s grandmother, and somehow they managed to keep up a correspondence during the war when he was a partisan in Northern Italy. Fenoglio became an acclaimed writer in Italy after the war but died young. This book is a very well written fictional story about partisans.
Next book on my TTBR pile – difficult to say because that stack of books is so high, but I think The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre is next.
6. Great spy fiction lives or dies on its antagonists. What makes a truly great spy fiction villain — and how do you approach writing yours?
The answer is not to approach them as villains. If you create a character with a premediated opinion of who they are then there’s a danger of telling the reader how to think about them, rather than let them form their opinion. My approach is to create characters – adversaries or otherwise – who are credible in their own right. I’ll give you an example from my time running journalism training at the BBC. In 2002, two 10-year-old schoolgirls disappeared from a small town in the east of England called Soham and were subsequently found murdered nearby. It was a major news story, with extensive coverage. I remember basing writing courses on this case – language such as the ‘shocking’ murders was unnecessary. When is the murder of two 10-year old girls not shocking? The lesson is to let the reader make up their own mind about a character or a situation. If you don’t do that then characters can be too one-dimensional.
7. What's the one detail — a location, a piece of tradecraft, a historical fact — you uncovered during research that was so good you had to put it in the book?
When I wrote my second novel – The Swiss Spy – I wanted to fly a character from London to Basle in Switzerland in August 1939. At the time the main international airport in England was Croydon. I was unsure when flights were suspended because of the threat of war so I tracked down the Croydon Airport Historical Society, who were very helpful. Flights continued until the declaration of war, they said. And by the way … was I aware that civilian flights continued in Europe throughout the duration of the war? I wasn’t aware of this. It turned out these flights could operated if at least one of the airports involved was in a neutral country: for example there were scheduled commercial flights from Bristol to Lisbon and Luft Hansa, as it was then called, flew from a number of German cities to Spain, Switzerland and Sweden. I’ve used these flights in several of my books – helped by the discovery of a website which has PDFs of literally hundreds of contemporary airline timetables.
8. What is the strangest or most unexpected place/situation/person/story you have ever taken inspiration for a plot or character from?
That’s a very difficult one … thinking about it though, some of my books have featured key locations from the Holocaust – notably concentration camps and the Warsaw Ghetto and I find these important but very difficult to write about – it involves a degree of personal family history (including a cousin who was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943). Also, the subject matter is so sensitive that I have to work really hard to get the tone and the plot right.
9. Which of your own characters would you most want running an operation you were part of — and which one would you absolutely not trust with your life?
I had a character called Richard Prince who featured in books 5-8 (the first was named Prince of Spies). I’ve always liked Prince –my main characters are often somewhat accidental or even reluctant spies, but Richard Prince was a star from the outset. He starts out as young but senior detective in Lincolnshire (the county I’m from), recently widowed and with a young son but he’s very smart and manages to capture a German spy who’s landed on Lincolnshire coast. He’s then recruited by MI6 and becomes an outstanding agent.
In terms of who I’d not trust? I’m really not sure, none of my main characters – the ‘goodies’, if you like – are that bad. Cooper, the main character in my current Double Agent series is a very reluctant spy, but he actually turns out to be rather good. And then there’s Archie, the shadowy traitor in this series … not sure I’d trust him even if he told me the time.
10. Is there a spy fiction author working today who you think deserves far more attention than they're getting? And what's the one book of theirs you'd start with
Alan Furst: if you know, you know … it’s not as if he’s exactly unknown but I’m surprised that he’s not received greater recognition. And the one novel? I think if it’s a novel to start with, I’d say Night Soldiers (1988) because that’s the first of the fifteen books in that series, but Dark Voyage (2004) is excellent too.
11. You're hosting the ultimate spy fiction dinner party — three guests, real or fictional, living or dead. Who's at the table?
I’m going for three authors, because as writers we’re always happy to talk (especially about our own books and our publishers!) and in my experience spies (I’ve met a few) are invariably enigmatic and not as forthcoming as you’d like. So, for my dinner party I’d go for Alan Furst (see above) and I’d reincarnate John le Carré and Graham Greene. If any can’t make it then how about Len Deighton – as long as he’s not too judgemental about the food.
12.. What's next for you — and is there anything about your current project you can tease us with?
City of Traitors – the third book in my Double Agent series – is all done and dusted and is published in August. I’m now writing the fourth and final book (to be published August 2027) in that series, which is without a title but it does have an ending, one I’m very pleased with even at this stage and it will finally see the unmasking of Archie. After that, who knows? I have one or two projects which exist in my mind and my notebook and there’s a particularly exciting project my agent Gordon Wise at Curtis Brown is currently negotiating.
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