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SPIES WORTH SEEKING OUT AUTHOR LAUREN WILKINSON’S FAVORITE TALES OF INTRIGUE
Wilkinson’s finesse with spycraft has led to writing for spy-centric television, including Citadel, an Amazon miniseries starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas that will air next year. Today, Wilkinson is working on a pilot for a television adaptation of Libra, the Don DeLillo novel about Lee Harvey Oswald and the plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy. The major difference between writing novels and writing for TV is in how she works, Wilkinson says. “Writing a novel means I’m more in control of my time and when I’ll be doing the writing,” she says. “With TV, there is a lot more input from producers and other people. I don’t dislike that—I’m happy to work collaboratively. I’ve been lucky that I enjoy both.” Below, her favorite thrilling reads. THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD BY JOHN LE CARRÉ
out to create a heroine who is in many ways an anti-Bond in her protagonist Marie, a Black woman who becomes an FBI agent in the late 1980s. “When I first started writing, I was reading a lot of classic spy novels, so of course I turned to Bond, and I was struck by how remarkably sexist the book Casino Royale was,” says Wilkinson, 37, who lives in New York. “I knew I wanted to write a female character, so I certainly couldn’t have that gaze. And Bond is not a very good spy—people know who he is. He walks in and is very prominent. So I wanted to give a look at someone who felt more realistic as a spy, someone more in the shadows.” Wilkinson subverts the conventional spy mold in other ways, too. Marie’s career takes her to Burkina Faso, where the U.S. government is trying to overthrow the presidency of the leftist Thomas Sankara. As the agent begins to develop a relationship with the leader, her unease with her mission grows. That the novel contains not only the intrigue and plot twists one expects from spy thrillers, but also a critique of American foreign policy, has not hindered its popularity—not even with former President Obama, who selected American Spy as one of his recommended reads in the summer of 2019. “It felt like winning the lottery,” Wilkinson says of Obama’s stamp of approval. “It’s the number one place people tell me they heard about my book. I’m curious to know what he thinks of the content!” 64
THE QUIET AMERICAN BY GRAHAM GREENE
“This is set in Vietnam in the ’50s, and the protagonist, Fowler, is a cynical, grizzled British guy. He has a romantic rival in this American, who is really informed about the politics of the region from books but doesn’t have any on-theground experience, which causes some problems. The book predates the American idea of Vietnam and ends up in a place of disaster. It’s a little bit prophetic.” YOUR HOUSE WILL PAY BY STEPH CHA
“This is more of a literary thriller. It’s set in Los Angeles during the ’90s, after a Korean store owner shoots a Black teenager. It has a couple of timelines in it: One follows the teenager’s family and the other follows a woman who realizes that her mother was the person responsible for the shooting that sparked rioting. It’s a very tense and interesting look at race, cities, and that historical moment.” HARRIET THE SPY BY LOUISE FITZHUGH
“I think the books we read when we’re younger have this hold of nostalgia on us in a way that books we read as adults don’t. Harriet was one of the first plucky heroines I encountered, and when I was that age, that’s what I was really attracted to. Someone smart, maybe a little weird—I saw myself in those characters, and they really spoke to me.”
Niqui Carter (portrait)
he title character of author Lauren Wilkinson’s debut novel, American Spy, is not a suave, attention-grabbing T lady killer in the mold of James Bond. In fact, Wilkinson set
“It really is a classic, and not as complicated as some of his other novels, like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It sets the stage and establishes that cynical, morally ambiguous kind of spy that inspires my own work, who asks himself, ‘What am I doing? What am I fighting for?’”
