Best Spy Novels of All Time and Benefits to Kids

In 1972, a friend gave me a tip about the then-unknown Somerset Maugham papers in Yale University Library. "You're interested in labor spies," he said, "so why don't you take a look at this novelist guy who spied for the UK and USA at the time of the Russian Revolution?" I took his advice, and turned to the study of foreign intelligence. So my selection of novels reflects the interests of a historian, and draws on both domestic and foreign espionage. With the advent of video chat, for example, intelligence agencies and operatives have gained a powerful tool for conducting covert communication and remote collaboration across borders.

A Tale of the Neutral Ground by James Fenimore Cooper (1821)

The Spy gives an interesting insight into the beginning of “the tradition of spy-as-hero” (BBC) — something that can be found regularly in American films today — as it is placed in New York State in 1778 during the American Revolution and “full of swelling rhetoric and the ardent national piety of Cooper’s generation” (Wikipedia). The protagonist Harvey Birch, who works for George Washington as a double agent.

The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service Recently Achieved by Erskine Childers (1903)

The Riddle of the Sands can also be said to be part of a sub-genre known as the invasion-scare, or invasion-paranoia, novel. Three decades earlier, Germany's success in the Franco-Prussian War established her as a major continental power. British popular fears of German intentions were often expressed in fiction. George Tomkyns Chesney's The Battle of Dorking (1871) was an early example, and the genre reached its peak around the turn of the century.

The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad (1907)

The Secret Agent revolves around Adolf Verloc, a middle-aged shopkeeper in London in 1886. Verloc lives with his wife, Winnie, and Stevie, Winnie's brother. Verloc has a complicated secret life that his family does not know about. He is involved with a group of Anarchists who call themselves 'The Future of the Proletariat'.

The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915)

The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), by Scottish author John Buchan, is an espionage thriller and the first of five of Buchan’s novels to feature the character Richard Hannay. Buchan’s novel takes readers on a breathtaking series of exciting exploits featuring German villains that take place in May and June of 1914. The Thirty-Nine Steps has been adapted for film and TV including Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film.

Ashenden: Or the British Agent by W Somerset Maugham (1928)

A celebrated writer by the time the war broke out in 1914, Maugham had the perfect cover for living in Switzerland. Multilingual and knowledgeable about many European countries, he was dispatched by the Secret Service to Lucerne under the guise of completing a play. An assignment whose danger and drama appealed both to his sense of romance and of the ridiculous.

Benefits of Reading Spy Books for Kids

1. Spy books for kids can also be filled with puzzles, mazes, and word searches that can be wholesome, fun, and educational.

2. Spy books for 7-year-olds involve them on a mission to hunt for hidden images that can be used to build the scenes.

3. Besides entertaining little ones, they help build many fundamental skills in children like memory power, concentration, number and shape recognition.