Spies by Jerry Durick
Spies were absent from what we learned in school, our lessons scrubbed clean, the straight line of history was best and easier to remember, but we learned about them later in endless novels and films; the CIA, MI6, and the KGB live out their lives as much on the page and screen as they probably do in real life, live their shadow lives in the safe houses of our imaginations, do their elaborate schemes following a well-made plot, staged for cinematic effect, with music to set the mood, with witty dialogue and meaningful facial expressions, one of the several James Bonds surviving the chase and all the convenient women; spies’ absence from schoolbooks left them free to be themselves, to be chief players, our alter-egos at work, imagining guns blazing, enemies thwarted as we move on to our next adventure, a beautiful woman on our arm and just the right thing to say.