Top 10 female spies in fiction
Spy fiction is a genre of titans: Rudyard Kipling, W Somerset Maugham, John Buchan, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, Len Deighton, John le Carré. That list will structure most histories of the genre. However, it is only half the picture, reflecting neither the true history of spy fiction nor espionage itself. These authors and their most famous heroes are all male. But for as long as there have been spies, there have been female spies. In the growing espionage machine of the 20th century, we see women in every area, from surveillance and propaganda, to code breaking and cryptography, and agent and double agent. Today’s spy world considers diversity a strategic asset.
As a child, I bought Fleming’s From Russia With Love in Pan paperback because I wanted to try writing spy fiction. I read Fleming on repeat, falling in love with his characterisation and vivid style. I would make notes on my neighbours – luckily very tolerant people – and turn their movements into mystery stories. In my imaginary games, I wasn’t a “Bond girl” – I was James Bond. I wanted to be the hero, not a supporting character.
In Double Or Nothing, the first novel in a series commissioned by the Ian Fleming Estate to expand the world of 007, Bond has vanished and time is running out. A new ensemble cast of double O agents must work against the clock to find Bond and save the world from climate catastrophe. The novel introduces readers to Johanna Harwood, named after the first woman to write Bond, the co-screenwriter of Dr No and From Russia With Love. Harwood trains as a trauma surgeon before a life-altering event brings her to Moneypenny’s attention, now head of the double O section (in the world’s most overdue promotion). Harwood becomes 003. I hope to empower women to see themselves as the hero, while reflecting the diversity of real espionage.
In a genre outwardly dominated by male writers and heroes, I sought out female spies in fiction to inspire me. Here are my Top 10.
1. While Still We Live, Helen MacInnes (1944)
Englishwoman Sheila Matthews is visiting friends in Poland when the Nazis invade. Refusing to abandon her loved ones or her ideals, she enters a dangerous game as a double agent embedded within the SS by the Polish underground. Helen MacInnes is the spy writer I’ve been searching for. Lyrical yet unflinching, anti-totalitarian, and packed with details informed by travelling through Europe alongside her spy husband prior to the second world war. I only discovered MacInnes recently. Despite 21 novels – many bestsellers and required reading for allied intelligence agencies – and four cinematic adaptations, you are most likely to find her today on lists of forgotten authors. MacInnes drills into the particular risks and courage of female spies, encapsulated in this brisk yet subversive statement: “If she had been a man, she would never have tried it.”
2. The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen (1948)
Drawing on her experiences in wartime London … Elizabeth Bowen, c.1949. Photograph: Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy
Stella is caught between her lover Robert, a spy, and Harrison, a counterespionage agent convinced Robert is a traitor. Forced to become a spy or traitor herself, against either the state or her heart, Stella’s battle is a luminous exploration of loyalty and truth. Drawing on Bowen’s experiences in wartime London, and perhaps her work with the Ministry of Information, The Heat of the Day captures the precariousness of life during the blitz.
3. Moonraker, Ian Fleming (1955)
When Fleming sat down to write Casino Royale in 1952, he intended to “write the spy story to end all spy stories”. He did, reinventing the genre and creating an icon. Fleming is less known for his female characters, perhaps overshadowed by their cinematic incarnations and the trope of the “Bond girl.” It’s a shame, because Fleming invests them with rich back stories and motivations. Best of all is cool-headed and capable Gala Brand, a special branch agent embedded with suspicious rocket-engineer Drax. It’s Brand’s mission that Bond joins, and her first impression is damning: “He could probably shoot all right and talk foreign languages and do a lot of tricks that might be useful abroad. But what good could he do down here without any beautiful spies to make love to.” The tender relationship that emerges delivers the most poignant ending to any Bond novel.
4. The Hothouse By the East River, Muriel Spark (1973)
Paul and Elsa were involved in secret propaganda work in the second world war. Now living in 1970s New York, everyone thinks Elsa is delusional, haunted by the memory of a German PoW. But could he really be back from the dead? In this hallucinatory novel, Spark draws on her work at a black ops intelligence site where she “took in a whole world of method and intrigue in the dark field of black propaganda or psychological warfare, and the successful and purposeful deceit of the enemy”.
5. The Little Drummer Girl, John le Carré (1983)
Le Carré’s only female protagonist, Charlie, is a British activist and actor accustomed to abusive relationships, the perfect prey for Israeli intelligence, who recruit her to go undercover with a suspected Palestinian bomber. Caught between two men and two claims for justice, Charlie’s search for agency drives the novel. One of Le Carré’s deepest character studies.
6. Black Widow: The Name of the Rose by Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Daniel Acuña (2011)
Debuting as a Soviet spy in 1964, a year after the comics launch of my favourite female spy, Modesty Blaise, Natasha Romanoff initially lacked the depth of her iconic contemporary, instead offering a fairly narrow femme fatale. However, a near 60-year run – alongside Scarlett Johansson’s powerful performance – has layered the character, offering a mine of conflict, which Liu digs into here as Black Widow’s past threatens to destroy her. We see the strength and sacrifice required to create a cohesive identity from so many fractures.
7. A Quiet Life, Natasha Walter (2016)
Dangerous power … Natasha Walter. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian
Spanning 1939-53 in the US and England, Laura Last’s desire for freedom from patriarchy leads to communist sympathies and a double life as one half of a married spy couple at the heart of the establishment. Natasha Walter brilliantly illustrates the dangerous power of someone taught to be a “wind-up doll” by society: “It felt more natural than she thought it would, to speak words that were not her own.”
8. Transcription, Kate Atkinson (2018)
Transcription follows Juliet Armstrong, recruited as a spy in 1940, through the second world war and into the cold war, from MI6 to the BBC, in a deconstruction of Britain’s national identity and institutions. Kate Atkinson plays on the presumptions we bring to the genre with a brilliantly sly use of point of view.
9. Who Is Vera Kelly? Rosalie Knecht (2018)
Knecht draws out the parallels between the covert life of a spy and a closeted queer woman in this compulsive cold war novel that moves from the suburban US to subversive Greenwich Village and student radicals in Buenos Aires. The frank yet vulnerable voice grabs you from page one and doesn’t let you go.
10. American Spy, Lauren Wilkinson (2019)
As a black FBI agent in the 1960s, Marie Mitchell’s career is thwarted by the all-white boys’ club until she is handed a mission to seduce and undermine the revolutionary president of Burkina Faso. Lauren Wilkinson illuminates the untold stories of the cold war in a searing exploration of belonging, race and gender.
Double Or Nothing by Kim Sherwood is published by HarperCollins. To help the Guardian and Observer order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.