We all know that James Bond is the classic example of what a perfect spy should be, at least once upon a time. But let’s be real, times have changed. We thought it would be perfect to ask a real former spy (one who loves a good novel), to read the new Bond novel Trigger Mortis, and report back his findings.
As a career spook, I’ve always felt conflicted about the James Bond brand and have never read a Bond novel before this one. On the one hand, the notion that British secret agent James Bond has anything remotely to do with the reality of the espionage game is absurd. On the other, the Bond phenomenon is great marketing for a profession that is at best misunderstood, and often reviled. For most of my career, newspapers, authors, politicians and self-proclaimed experts wrote and spoke about intelligence professionals as all but criminals and idiots – even when they knew better. So, anything that portrays us in a good light is a net positive – James Bond is better than Maxwell Smart.
“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62
Access all of The Cipher Brief‘s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+Member.
