Bongo , you are a fan of Furst, do you recommend any particular books of his as being better than others?
I read them out of order over a long period, so I'm not that clear on them, but the ones that made the deepest impression seemed to be the ones in the middle as they were most realistic and least overheated.
In my experience, a true spy story is without a beginning or an end, just an unsatisfactory middle with a great deal of dreamlike, paranoiac blundering about to no apparent consequence -- a disoriented, faintly-sinister shaggy-dog story, apparently futile. I accumulated some great, screwy true spook tales in my youth, one of the most characteristically ridiculous being how I came to meet my beloved mentor.
There are a couple of Furst stories that approach that level of realism, though they are probably his least popular.
In a couple of them not much happens, and in at least one,
Blood of Victory, I believe, the protagonist fails in his rather ill-conceived op.
Successful "spy" fiction is almost entirely pure fantasy.
[While I stand in humble awe of western technical intelligence, I am skeptical of western human intelligence, which some decades ago I sincerely defined as "a surprisingly large number of unsuitable persons practicing improvisational deceit that invariably redounds upon the wrong parties, primarily themselves."
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