According to the Masterclass web site:

“The spy thriller is a genre of literature that centers around a storyline with secret agents and espionage. Part action-adventure and part thriller, spy stories often follow a government agent racing against the clock to thwart a big attack or uncover an enemy’s plans in order to save lives—sometimes even the world.”

Likely, you will not find this exact genre at your local bookstore, but in the general fiction section, alphabetically by author’s last name.

As I started writing my first novel, I started reading, Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, John Le Carré, Alan Furst, Ian Fleming, Daniel Silva, Olen Steinhauer, and many others. I often wonder why there is no official subgenre instead of grouping everything into Mystery Fiction.

Reading these famous authors has given me an understanding of how it differs and is distinct from the general fiction genre.

• Come up with a killer Concept. There are many fiction stories out there so a writer must come up with a unique angle and concept. I write to my passion and so must every writer. Coming up with a fresh idea that is not typically average is going to serve a reader to read your book.
• Become familiar with spy tools of the trade. I quickly discovered technology has evolved over centuries and a tool used in the 1800s will not be the same, nor get the job done in the 2000s. Sometimes inventing tools is acceptable but your reader must think that it is believable, unless it is science fiction.
• Create an incredible protagonist. A writer dreams of the reading public remembering the protagonist of their story. Readers remember James Bond, Jack Ryan, Jason Borne, and why can’t any other writer create another one? Writing for the reader to root for the “good guy” produces the objective of the public buying books. But it must be compelling!
• Writing highly visual action scenes. In the first Borne Identity, who knew at the very beginning that Jason Borne was in an amnesiac state? And we never forgot it, either. The setting set the stage for the rest of the story to unfold. When the rest of the action started, Ludlum wrote so as to put the reader IN the scene by highly descript scenes. It is one factor for a reader turning the page.
• Using page-turning literary devices. Plot twists, cliffhangers, dramatic irony, foreshadowing, red herrings: When you write a spy novel, you’ll get to employ literary devices you might not have used before. To write a real page-turning story of espionage, make sure you take advantage of the tools that literature has to offer for maximum suspense.

All these things contribute to a great adventure for the writer that writes from the heart and a reader that reads compelling spy fiction. I wished the literary periodicals would do theme issues on spy fiction but they only come as close as mystery fiction.

I hope I gave you something to think about in this genre. There is an excellent resource to show you the history of spy fiction stories and it can be found at the Toledo Library’s blog in Ohio, which is chock full of information.