Licence to Spill is Spybrary's Q&A series in which spy authors are grilled by spy thriller book fans.
Licence to Spill with Dan Fesperman
Welcome to Licence to Spill, Spybrary’s spy author Q&A series, where we put spy writers under the spotlight and ask them the questions spy thriller readers really want answered.
In the interrogation chair today is Dan Fesperman. Dan’s fourteen critically acclaimed spy novels of intrigue and suspense have won two Dagger Awards from the UK Crime Writers Association, the Dashiell Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers, and the Barry Award for Best Thriller
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“?
Well, I first started reading John le Carre's novels when I was right out of college, and devoured them, so I suppose that had something to do with it. But my first three novels, set in the Balkans and Afghanistan, had detectives and journalists in the leading roles. The event that turned me more sharply toward spy novels was my involvement in a TV project about 18 years ago, a proposed dramatic series based on the early history of the CIA. HBO was footing the bill, and the showrunner was David Simon, of “The Wire,” with Ed Burns also deeply involved.
My job, along with some script writing, was to do the initial research, so I traveled around the country for several months talking to veterans of the OSS and the CIA's earliest days. I spoke with about twenty people in all, the most illustrious of whom were Frank G. Wisner Jr. (son of the overly ambitious CIA figure), his brother Graham Wisner, William Hood, Peter Sichel, Frank and Margot Lindsay, Thomas Polgar, David Murphy, Cicely Angleton (wife of James), and more. It was quite an education for me, and gave me loads of material plus a certain level of expertise about the way the spying biz works, all of which I continue to draw upon.
HBO then decided the whole thing was too expensive, so the show was never approved for production, alas, despite two subsequent attempts to revive it by the BBC and Sky, a process that dragged on across fifteen years and several rewrites.
Whew! So it's nice I at least got plenty of novelistic material out of it. As for all those people I spoke with, every one of them is now dead, so I feel lucky to have had the chance.
1a For those new to your work, where do you recommend Spybrary readers start?
I'd suggest either Safe Houses or Winter Work.
2. Walk us through your research process. Are you an “immerse yourself for months before writing” person? Do you visit and scope out locations?
First I poke around quite a bit online, looking for the names of people who know about the subject or kind of event that will be at the heart of the novel, and then I seek out those people for interviews. And, yes, I always visit the setting, even if it's a place I'm quite familiar with.
Having lived and worked in Berlin from 1993 to 96, I often gravitate there for my settings, although I'm always open to other places, especially ones where I spent a lot of time as a reporter — the Balkans, the Middle East, and so on.
I'd never use a setting I' hadn't been to, unless of course it was one I created, as with the fictional Eastern European country of Bolrovia in Pariah.
3. Which era of espionage is your absolute favourite era to write in, and what makes it so irresistible?
The Cold War, especially in its latter years, and also in its immediate aftermath, when there was so much upheaval, and the rules, such as they were, no longer applied. I doubt we'll ever see an era like that again, when the boundaries and the adversaries were so clearly marked off, and the key players had their own weird sets of rules for the games they were playing.
In Berlin and much of Eastern Europe, for example, the main adversaries operated with the understanding that neither side would kill the other side's spies, although locals serving as agents, cutouts and go-betweens were always fair game because, well, someone had to be expendable. You had all these adversarial people moving in the same circles and going to the same places on both sides of the Iron Curtain, but especially in Cold War Berlin, the ultimate theme park for spying.
4. Which spy fiction book do you wish you had written yourself — and why?
Depending on the mood I was in, it would either be Le Carre's Tinker, Tailor Soldier Spy... or Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana, the former for its intricacy, authenticity and staggering array of memorable characters, and the latter for its humor and happy willingness to lampoon the whole profession.
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 just finished the first volume of Volker Ullrich‘s monumental biography of Hitler, alternately fascinating and appalling, in no small part because of how many times I was struck by the personality similarities with another egotistical leader who currently aspires to annex new territory and build a massive triumphal arch; and I'm about to start Michael Idov's latest novel, The Cormorant Hunt. Atop my TBR pile is a massive novel, Antkind, by filmmaker Charlie Kaufman, which I keep setting aside every 50 pages or so because it drives me nuts, yet it's so funny at times that I can't help but keep coming back for more. I'm about 300 pages in, with 400 TBR.
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?
That's difficult to answer, maybe because I wish I wrote better villains. Oddly, if you look at some of the most renowned ones, they are often riddles, and only vaguely sketched out, which seems to be half their power, as with Karla in his great struggle against Smiley. We only actually meet him a few times, and even then we're seeing him through Smiley's memories and surmises. So maybe the secret of a great spy villain is to keep them at least partly behind the curtain.
In the book I've just finished, it's debatable at times as to who the villains really are, with the exception of a couple shady fellows who carry the adversarial action on their shoulders on behalf of someone we scarcely meet and only belatedly identify — so maybe that means I'm finally getting the hang of it.
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 was touring for Safe Houses, a former Army colonel approached me after a stop in Dallas to tell me a wonderful story about a pair of Western military attaches who were driving around the East German countryside during a Soviet war gaming exercise in the midst of the Cold War, in hopes of snooping on the whole thing, only to then be waylaid by the car of a Soviet general, who, not knowing who they were, asked for their help in reading his maps to figure out where they were.
He spread out a huge map on the hood of his staff car which included prominent markings for all the tactical movements of the exercise. The lucky two attaches then memorized everything they could before pointing out their location.
In Winter Work, I set a similar scene, but included one of my own characters and also added a prominent guest to the general's car — East German spymaster Markus Wolf.
8. What is the strangest or most unexpected place/situation/person/story you have ever taken inspiration for a plot or character from?
I think that would be a place — the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Talk about surreal and bizarre — a prison that is probably illegal (and almost certainly Unconstitutional, which is why they didn't dare locate it on US soil), built within a Naval base surrounded by watchtowers, a secure fenceline and hordes of giant iguanas — a prison within a prison, if you will — and all of it being run in a climate of deep mistrust, not only between the guards and their inmates, and the base and its Cuban neighbors, but also between the two main agencies that were responsible for interrogating the prisoners — the FBI and CIA.
Stranger still, when I was visiting the place for research, BBC journalist and writer Gordon Corera was also there, and we jointly interviewed the prison's Muslim chaplain, who, a few weeks later, was arrested on charges of espionage. Both of us felt like we'd either missed a sensational story, right under our noses, or that the charges were totally ludicrous. The latter turned out to be true, and all of the most serious charges were dismissed. Weirdest place I've ever been.
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?
For the former, Emil Grimm, without a doubt, my East German spymaster at the heart of Winter Work. I trust his skills so much that I brought him back for an encore, five years later, in the manuscript I just tuned in for my next book, The Resettlement Officer. He's a smart, savvy fellow who, above all, is a great manipulator. I'd never trust my life to Branko Sarič, the ruthless Interior security chief for the nation of Bolrovia in Pariah. He's quite good with all manners of spy and surveillance tech, but fairly inept in dealing with human beings.
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
Michael Idov, who has only written two novels but scarcely got any attention for his first one, The Collaborators, even though it has loads of depth, vivid setting, memorable characters and wonderful pacing. And I'm convinced that the main reason it got such scant attention was that, in the US anyway, the cover of the Scribners hardback was simply godawful, worse than anything you'll see on most self-published novels. I'd received an ARC and had immediately set it aside because it looked so amateurish. Months later, in a moment of boredom, I starting reading it, and guiltily realized it was quite good.
11. You're hosting the ultimate spy fiction dinner party — three guests, real or fictional, living or dead. Who's at the table?
Well, there are quite a few current writers whose dinner company I've immensely enjoyed, so I'll opt for dead ones, since this is a wish list. John Le Carré and Graham Greene, for starters, if only to hear their repartee about their own lives inside MI6, and how it shaped their fiction, with Le Carre of course liable to toss a few exaggerations into the mix.
Then, after a few drinks, I'd surprise them by ushering in the great American writer, Charles McCarry, if only to see their reactions to having brought in someone who'd worked for the agency they were always repelled by, and also to see his reaction to their presence.
By dessert, I wonder if I'd be having to step in to calm things down, or, perhaps they'd all be perfect gentlemen, content to pull their punches while quietly gathering material for their next novels. As a bonus, here's the guest I wouldn't want — George Smiley, mostly because I think he'd devote most of his energies to withholding anything interesting, or wiping his specs on his necktie, or sighing every few minutes over the latest unspoken dalliance of Lady Ann.
12.. What's next for you — and is there anything about your current project you can tease us with?
The novel I mentioned earlier, The Resettlement Officer, in which we rejoin Emil Grimm in 1995, five years after Winter Work, when he is summoned to help clean up a bit of unfinished Cold War business. We also get to meet Jordy Egan, a disgraced CIA man who has been banished from his overseas posting to “penalty box” duty in the US as a resettlement officer for the little-known CIA bureau that tends to the safety, security and other needs of hundreds of foreign spies that have defected to the United States. It sprawls across two time periods — 1995 and, in flashbacks, 1983-85 — and inevitably gravitates toward Berlin. I've just turned in the manuscript, and it will most likely be published in June of 2027.
Thank you to Dan for participating in Spybrary's Spy Author Q&A, Licence to Spill.
Dan Fesperman Official Website
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