Generally speaking, spy stories used to come in two basic varieties: escapist tales of impossibly suave international operatives taking down battalions of evil minions as effortlessly as they seduce every gorgeous woman who crosses their paths (the Ian Fleming paradigm) or downbeat, oppressively bleak chronicles of faceless functionaries in shabby rooms awaiting cryptic phone calls as they contemplate their moral decay (the John le Carré model). Absurd power fantasies for armchair adventurers or stylish literary bummers that go down like sour gin—give or take a Jason Bourne: These were basically your choices. But in our postmodern era, as genres break apart and recombine like so many world-ending super-viruses concocted by mad megalomaniacs in their volcano lairs, espionage narratives have mutated into any number of fascinating forms. In Indieland, we’ve been updating our dossiers to track some of the more intriguing heirs of James Bond and George Smiley.

In Hannah Honegger’s A Lady, Mary Hannah André, a young 18th-century Englishwoman, tires of being little more than a decorative object at lavish parties and travels to America in search of adventure. She finds it, ultimately joining George Washington’s (real-life) Culper Ring spy network. Our reviewer praises the novel’s fusion of romance and espionage tropes, highlighting Mary as a “spirited, engaging protagonist, bringing readers directly into the intriguing spy games and up close to the colonial luminaries of the day.”

Allan Krummenacker and Richard Caminiti’s The Pass moves up the action from the American Revolution to the Civil War, chronicling the adventures of Keefer O’Connor, an Irish immigrant recruited by the War Department to assassinate the governor of California should he waver in his anti-slavery stance. Keefer has the wit and charm of a James Bond—along with the paranormal ability to see 60 seconds into the future. It’s not exactly a missile-equipped Aston Martin, but it comes in handy as he struggles to evade the supernatural creatures hot on his trail. Our reviewer singled out the novel’s “exhilarating scenes of battle and tension.”

Another war, another spy: F.R. Vincenti’s World War II–set Glenda Paal & The Devil’s Dawn features a young Swedish “linguistic chameleon” who, through a convoluted series of events, finds herself a triple-agent simultaneously working for multiple national interests (her true mission is to defeat the Nazis). Juggling a handful of unique personas, Glenda is “a stellar, larger-than-life (in good spy-genre style) lead,” per our review.

We come full circle with Haris Orkin’s The Spy Who Hated Me, a spoof of James Bond yarns that makes its intentions clear from the title page. James Flynn is a patient at a psychiatric institution who believes himself to be a master spy. He’s not entirely delusional: He has, in fact, saved the world on several occasions with his curiously effective skills. In this installment of the series, James embarks on a mission to track down his sort-of girlfriend, CIA agent Caitlyn Valentine, who has stopped returning his calls. Our reviewer judges the novel to be “endlessly entertaining”; in a world gone mad, James Flynn may be just the hero we need. 

Arthur Smith is an Indie editor.