Agent Palmer

Episode 22 features Spybrarian Shane Whaley, host and creator of The Spybrary Podcast. 

We discuss getting started in the fandom of spy fiction, James Bond, Len Deighton, the Cold War as perhaps the hottest topic, human intelligence, and sometimes spy fact being stranger than spy fiction.

During the episode we cover:

• Our Introductions to Spy Fiction
• Getting into reading
• Len Deighton
  • Harry Palmer (The Unnamed Spy)
  • Bernard Samson
• James Bond
• Books
• Spy Movies
• Spy Television
• Buying Books
• Reading begets reading
• The Cold War
• Spy Comedy
• Launching Spybrary
• Building a community
• Bomber
• And much more…

Mentioned and Helpful Links from This Episode

Spybrary.com 

The Wicked Theory Podcast Patreon to listen to “Ed Bonds with Bill”

Agent Palmer’s Brush Pass Episode of Yesterday’s Spy by Len Deighton (Spybrary Episode 33)

Music created and provided by Henno Heitur of Monkey Tongue Productions.

–End Show Notes Transmission–

–Begin Transcription–

00:00:00:01 – 00:00:29:30
Agent Palmer
Previously on Agent Palmer dot com. Optimism in the form of art. The Russian Five is more than just a documentary about hockey, and we’re getting closer to the release of Essa Hanson’s debut novel. This is The Palmer Files, episode 22 with librarian Shane Whaley, the force behind the Spybrary podcast, we discuss getting started in the fandom of spy fiction, James Bond, Len Deighton, The Cold War as perhaps the hottest topic human intelligence and sometimes spy fact being stranger than spy fiction.

00:00:29:34 – 00:01:01:25
Agent Palmer
This introduction will be destroyed in five, four, three. Let’s do the show.

00:01:01:29 – 00:01:27:25
Agent Palmer
Hello, and welcome to the Palmer Files. I’m your host, Jason Stershic, also known as Agent Palmer. And on this 22nd episode is Spybrary and extraordinaire Shane Whaley, host and creator of the Spybrary podcast. Back when I was just a blogger, guesting on a lot of shows and listening to a ton more podcasts than I do now, I remember tweeting back and forth with a very brand new account called Spybrary that seemed like it would be a fun concept.

00:01:27:30 – 00:01:54:40
Agent Palmer
That was before even one episode of the now over 100 and counting episodes full of spy fiction fact, authors, fans, and all of the intelligence you can handle and more was launched. I took part in a Brush Past episode when I finished reading Yesterday’s Spy by Len Deighton a long time ago, but that podcast and its community has grown, and it’s been great fun to listen and participate, even if I’m only on the side most of the time.

00:01:54:45 – 00:02:20:50
Agent Palmer
But when it came time to discuss a genre, not just a topic, but an entire genre across mediums like the written word, the small screen, the big screen, plus the fact and fiction with lines blurred all in regard to spy fiction. There was only one person to turn to Shane Whaley, the head spy. And what you were in for is a discussion on what got us into the genre and why we stay.

00:02:20:55 – 00:02:43:11
Agent Palmer
You’ll hear about authors, you know, and perhaps some you don’t. You’ll discover that we discuss bond, but you have to. And then, because we’re both fans, we discuss Dayton and cover a lot of other ground, all unredacted and fully disclosed for the discerning listener. So if you want to discuss the episode as you listen or after, you can tweet me at Agent Palmer.

00:02:43:13 – 00:03:07:24
Agent Palmer
You can tweet the show at the Palmer Files, and you can tweet Shane at Spybrary. That’s s Spybrary. You can see the complete Spy podcast dossier at Spybrary.com. Or listen wherever you’re listening to this podcast. Don’t forget, you can see all of my writings and rantings on Agent palmer.com. Meanwhile, the unredacted links mentioned in the show will be available in the show notes.

00:03:07:29 – 00:03:17:55
Agent Palmer
So without further ado, let’s get into it.

00:03:18:00 – 00:03:30:50
Agent Palmer
Shane. Today I want to talk about spy fiction. And who better than the host of the spy podcast? So I’m going to softball it for you. What drew you to spy fiction?

00:03:30:55 – 00:03:56:08
Shane Whaley
So if you’d asked me this in my 20s, I would tell you that. Or would have told you that I was drawn to the glamor of James Bond, the escapism of Simon Templar, the adventurous kind of spy novels. I really enjoyed. But towards the end of my 20s, I kind of got a bit bored of that genre, and I got back into reading political, biography, history, economics, etc. so kind of heavy stuff.

00:03:56:13 – 00:04:15:58
Shane Whaley
And then about five, six years ago, I, yeah, would have been around the time that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy came out, the movie version. So what was that 2011? Yeah. So around that time I watched that movie and I thought, oh, you know, I really miss reading spy books. And I picked up a car. Oh, I tried to read the car in my 20s.

00:04:15:58 – 00:04:32:32
Shane Whaley
And here’s the anti bond riding me. You can’t get more further away from James Bond than a John le Carré novel. And in my 20s, I remember picking up a small town in Germany, a luxury novel that I just, I think I gave it two chapters in my. This is above my my head. This is what I’ve signed up for.

00:04:32:32 – 00:04:47:43
Shane Whaley
No one’s died. No one’s taking anyone to bed. No one’s jumped in a fast car. Whatever. Right. I, couldn’t get into it in my 20s. And then I, you know, a few years ago, I really enjoyed the car, and I realized he had 20 odd books off the wall. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do here.

00:04:47:48 – 00:05:08:39
Shane Whaley
And through reading le Carré, I went through his whole back catalog and I just couldn’t get enough. And the really cool thing about spy fiction is you ask people on the street about spy books, and they will give you James Bond, for instance. Maybe now they will give you kind of, you know, what’s his name? Ryan Clancy’s, Jack Ryan.

00:05:08:41 – 00:05:34:47
Shane Whaley
Yep. All of that stuff. And for me, when I started the spy podcast, like, I thought I had a good understanding of the landscape for spy novels, I knew nothing, I knew nothing. The suggestions I get from the spy listeners on our Facebook group, I mean, there are so many great writers out there that I was not familiar with, and not just from yester year, not from what I call the glory days of espionage writing, which I think was during the Cold War years.

00:05:35:02 – 00:05:55:11
Shane Whaley
But even contemporary writers today like Mick Herron, Charles Cumming, Jeremy Duns, I was not aware of these books. I thought, wow, I’m hosting this podcast library and I probably read like 1% of the good stuff. So that Hope opened up, a lot of doors into reading. It cost me an absolute fortune. It’s it’s in my collection.

00:05:55:15 – 00:06:27:33
Shane Whaley
But I can’t think of anything better to spend money on that than spy books, quite frankly. So very much spy fiction. Of late, I have kind of moved more into certainly this year into the nonfiction side as well. And I’ll explain a little bit more about that as we go on. But yeah, so that the podcast came about really because I wanted to interview authors, I wanted to interview fans of other authors that I wasn’t aware of and really delve into this, you know, rich tapestry, if you will, of fantastic spy writing that’s out there and help people discover great spy novels.

00:06:27:37 – 00:06:53:49
Agent Palmer
So when you’re talking about in your 20s, you, obviously you were talking about reading Fleming, but what influence did the movies have on you? Was it because obviously it’s it’s in that heyday where, like, bond films are coming out on a regular basis because you’re a bit older than me. So for me, like Brosnan was my first in the theater.

00:06:53:49 – 00:07:15:32
Agent Palmer
Bond and I kind of grew up and came of age watching the older bond films in a dead zone, like, yeah, my parents introduced me to like, Doctor Know and Octopussy and, you know, from Russia With Love, and I got to watch all of the bonds. But then, you know, I’m like, I don’t know, 12, 13. I don’t have anything like I don’t have I don’t have my own.

00:07:15:36 – 00:07:29:22
Agent Palmer
I haven’t seen one. The theater. It’s not until GoldenEye where I get to be like, oh, now I get to see it on the big screen. Finally. Shows. Did the films come first for you? Did you did you find the novels first? What was your introduction there?

00:07:29:33 – 00:07:51:52
Shane Whaley
Definitely the films, as was a little boy. I lived for James Bond, movies. I was a huge fan of Roger Moore. Roger Moore was an, I guess still is my absolute hero. And I know that’s very controversial within James Bond circles. We’ve all got our favorites and I respect that. But for me, growing up, like, you know, I was never happier unless I was watching a bond movie.

00:07:51:52 – 00:08:09:01
Shane Whaley
And of course, because I’m, you know, bit older than you. This was before VCRs, before the bond movies were out. So Christmas Day, there’d always be a bond movie on. So it was part of that tradition for us of the holiday that, oh, you watch a bond movie? Same, I think, on Easter Sunday or Easter Monday, whichever one you would watch a bond movie.

00:08:09:15 – 00:08:25:42
Shane Whaley
So I love the bond movies and it’s quite funny. I think in my mid-teens, I picked up a copy of Fleming’s The Spy Who Loved Me, the novel at a jumble sale flea market. Oh, great. I have well, I’ll read a bond book. And as you know, The Spy Who Loved Me, or if not most of Fleming’s writing is radically different.

00:08:25:46 – 00:08:43:07
Shane Whaley
Yes, from the movies I read. Like two chapters in. I’m like, what is bond? I mean, it’s about 100 pages before James Bond comes in, even into that story. So it wasn’t the best one to pick up. But even so, as a teenager, I remember throwing away and thinking like, whoa, the the books are nothing like the movies.

00:08:43:07 – 00:09:02:18
Shane Whaley
And then I would buy, you know, they would always bring out. Or you could find that the movie, the story of the movie. Okay, in the book. And I read the novelization. Yeah. And I would read those and I yeah, this is more like it. But of course, they weren’t written by Fleming. I mean, some of them use the ideas of Fleming, but you can’t get anything more different from the novel The Spy Loved Me to the movie.

00:09:02:18 – 00:09:21:16
Shane Whaley
Also, Moonraker is radically different. I mean, I really wish I had Elon Musk’s money and I would commission the original story of Moonraker to be made. It’s such a great story. So yeah, so definitely the movies first and then book reading at that time. This is kind of what started it really is. I would read Biggles. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Biggles in the United States.

00:09:21:16 – 00:09:41:30
Shane Whaley
So he was a First World War fighter pilot who became a spy. And there were lots of those books written very much of its time. Then, of course, I graduated to the Saint, and there was plenty of Simon Templar to be read. So they were the kind of books the Three Investigators, the Hardy Boys. I was really interested the adventure kind of paperback for boys.

00:09:41:30 – 00:09:43:17
Shane Whaley
That was how I started my reading.

00:09:43:21 – 00:10:20:51
Agent Palmer
So for me, I was a fantasy reader and science fiction, you know, Tolkien. Clark, you know, this is where I was at, you know, 1011 when I’m watching these older films, I still to this day haven’t picked up a Fleming yet. And I’m going to, you know, the the more I’m around your podcast, your community, and just other friends in general, like it’s going to happen and then I think it was at some point I asked my mother why it was Michael Caine in Austin Powers.

00:10:20:51 – 00:10:48:15
Agent Palmer
Like, why was he chose it? And she goes, well, he was a he was a spy in the 60s. And that I went and then I went back and I watched The Ipcress File, and then I watched I, I think it’s Billion Dollar Brain is the next movie. I’m not sure. I watched all of the Palmer movies and it just so happened that I, I fell in love with these.

00:10:48:15 – 00:11:07:17
Agent Palmer
I just absolutely fell in love with them. And I went, all right, well, I know they’re based on a book like these Are Things You Just Know. So I picked up Ipcress File and I read Dayton, and that was like, all right, well, now now I’m going to read through all of Dayton. And this is only in the last 8 or 9 years.

00:11:07:22 – 00:11:35:17
Agent Palmer
So when it came time to name the blog, I was like, well, I’m going to be Agent Palmer. That’s easy. It’s, it’s it’s nondescript, so I can still write about anything I want, but it still works. And so I actually had to stop listening to your show because you kept talking about Bernard Sampson as one of your favorite Dayton spies.

00:11:35:21 – 00:12:00:50
Agent Palmer
And I’ve been diligently reading through Dayton’s entire back catalog, which means I haven’t just read the spy fiction, I’ve read the historical fiction and the nonfiction. My next book is the first game set match. My first? Yeah, my first. My next Dayton book. Finally getting to Bernard Sampson. But you guys kept talking about him so much and with spoilers.

00:12:00:50 – 00:12:23:17
Agent Palmer
And I was like, I have to stay away. Like, I can’t because I want I want to be surprised. And the other part is, Dayton is not the only author I’m reading through. So, you know, as an example, the book I’m reading right now, it’s called, girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Copeland. Right. And if you’re not a fan of Douglas Copeland or you don’t know who he is, that’s fine.

00:12:23:22 – 00:12:26:45
Shane Whaley
But I’m a fan of The Smiths, so I know where that title has come from.

00:12:26:45 – 00:12:56:01
Agent Palmer
Okay, so one of the things about my reading of these authors is I don’t read the back cover, I just take the next book that was published, girlfriend in a coma. I’m reading, and it’s about a girlfriend who goes into a coma for 17 years, and she has. She gives birth because the night before she goes in the coma, she has sex and she gives birth nine months later, which apparently is not unprecedented.

00:12:56:06 – 00:13:16:27
Agent Palmer
And then I was going to tell my friend about the book I was reading, and I read the back cover. Now, to me, as I’m reading this, it’s a surprise that she has gives birth. Yeah. It’s in it’s in the paragraph on the back cover. Yeah. Like but I got this wonderful like super surprise that I wasn’t expecting.

00:13:16:32 – 00:13:32:20
Agent Palmer
So for me, with the Dayton novels, I never know what I’m getting at or I get the title. I know because I’ve listened to you guys like, I know Bernard Thompson’s coming next, but I have no idea of what to expect.

00:13:32:25 – 00:13:32:50
Shane Whaley
You know.

00:13:32:50 – 00:13:33:24
Agent Palmer
And I’m not.

00:13:33:24 – 00:13:33:59
Shane Whaley
Jealous.

00:13:33:59 – 00:13:53:03
Agent Palmer
I’m not going to read the back covers. I’m not going to read the inside flaps. I’m just going to when when it comes up in the rotation and it’s time, I’m going to read it. I wish everybody could do that with these books. Like I go, I can never I can never read The Ipcress File again for the first time.

00:13:53:08 – 00:13:59:52
Agent Palmer
That was it’s still up there for me as one of my top favorite things.

00:14:00:05 – 00:14:02:20
Shane Whaley
How did you think it compared to the movie?

00:14:02:25 – 00:14:27:19
Agent Palmer
It’s different. It’s one of those. So one of the weird things, especially about spy fiction, is that they take like whenever a movie goes to this, book goes to the screen, it feels like they take three beats and that’s it. We’re going to take the character, we’re going to take the turn, and we’re going to take the villain, and we’re going to make everything else in between up.

00:14:27:19 – 00:14:57:27
Agent Palmer
Like that’s what it feels like, because, I had watched the movie first, right? So the movie was in my head when I picked up the book, and I’m reading this book that is about the Cold War and about nuclear powers, and it’s globetrotting that the movie doesn’t really do. So there’s all this extra stuff, and at a certain point, you just have to put it away.

00:14:57:27 – 00:15:09:33
Agent Palmer
You just have to compartmentalize. And this is not even that they shared the same characters in terms of characterizations. They share the same title. And that’s where they end.

00:15:09:44 – 00:15:26:56
Shane Whaley
It’s interesting you say that because for me, you know, nine times out of ten, the novel is always better than the movie, right? Because to go into more detail is more depth. You know, you really invest in the characters. But for me, I actually felt the movie of it. Chris was better than the novel. Okay. I enjoyed the movie more now.

00:15:26:56 – 00:15:43:20
Shane Whaley
The others, like Billion Dollar Brain and Funeral in Berlin. I think the novels do eclipse. As much as I love a funeral in Berlin, that’s like right up there for me. That’s a that is a movie. I will never tire of watching it for several reasons, but love that movie. But actually Ipcress File, if you said you can either watch the movie or read the book, I’d watch the movie.

00:15:43:25 – 00:16:10:28
Agent Palmer
To me, they’re so different that I feel like they might as well have different titles. Yeah, because I, I think I like the book more because it is that extra Cold War nuclear power. Yeah thing. The brainwash thing in the movie is fun and it’s an amazing element. And to think that they did that in the 60s and it was like, well, how did they how did they shoot this, like that kind of stuff?

00:16:10:32 – 00:16:34:29
Agent Palmer
But yeah, to me they’re just so separate. But that book, I absolutely love that book. We’ve touched a little bit on bond. He’s like the big the big guy. Right. Like I feel like I’m the guy in the corner that when it doesn’t come to your community of spy fans is like, hey, what about Palmer? And it’s not even like, that’s because it’s my name.

00:16:34:29 – 00:17:04:53
Agent Palmer
It’s like, I mean, as a as a film franchise. And as a series of books, the unnamed spy series like, that’s been fun. Even Bernard Sampson, like, maybe because he doesn’t get, like, that big blockbuster movie. Like bond. Is it until we get to say, like Jack Reacher that you mentioned or, Jason Bourne, it almost feels like these characters for the big screen need that massive current motion picture in order to be relevant.

00:17:04:58 – 00:17:32:20
Shane Whaley
It’s true. But then I think also they can be a turnoff for people who, for instance, grew up with the Fleming books. A lot of them can’t stand the movies, right? Because they read the book, and the book is so radically different from the movies. And I think, yeah, especially nowadays with the let’s talk about, you know, the especially the Daniel Craig movies, a lot of the traditional bond movies are like, yeah, this is so far away from the novels now that I’m kind of sick of they’ll go and watch it, because I think we all feel loyal and we should go support it.

00:17:32:20 – 00:17:49:42
Shane Whaley
But even myself, I honestly thought, well, you know, we’ve got this one coming out now and again, sacrilege to a lot of my listeners here. But I’m like, knock on the head, I think it’s done. I don’t know where they can take it. Right. It’s just now becoming another blockbuster action movie. They’re trying to outdo Mission Impossible.

00:17:49:46 – 00:18:04:38
Shane Whaley
And, and I like the storyline they built up with Craig and the reboot. You saw his first kill? Yeah, all of that. That was great. Loved it. I thought Casino Royale was superb. Now I’m like, okay, where do they take it next? And I wouldn’t be sorry for them to say, like, we’ve had a good run.

00:18:04:51 – 00:18:05:35
Shane Whaley
We’re done.

00:18:05:39 – 00:18:28:17
Agent Palmer
See? And I, I mean, I know everybody, I know there’s people within my circle that are like, you know, James Bond’s a time Lord, and and and that whole I don’t care. I don’t care so much. Like, I love the fact that early on it’s just episodic movies, right? It’s it’s built into the week on the big screen, and I’m okay with that.

00:18:28:17 – 00:18:46:18
Agent Palmer
And it was kind of one of the things that it’s one of my detractors from the Craig series is I don’t need these movies to be connected. Yeah, I’m okay with a villain of the year. So to speak. Yeah. It’s like, all right, what am I getting this year? Yeah. Are we going underwater? Are we going to space?

00:18:46:18 – 00:19:01:19
Agent Palmer
That’s fine. I’m okay with it. Like, give it to me. It’s cool. What are the gadgets? All right. Like, I’m. I’m on board, but that’s all on the big screen. What about for you on the small screen? What are your favorites for television series?

00:19:01:24 – 00:19:18:19
Shane Whaley
Again, if you’d asked me this in the 20s to today, you would get very different answers. In the 20s, I would say things like the same whenever there was a Saint episode on I’d be, I’d sit down and watch it. Now, for instance, where we’ve just, recorded our second roundtable on the Sand Baggers. Are you familiar with the sandbags?

00:19:18:24 – 00:19:21:22
Agent Palmer
Only in that it exists, because I did listen to your first.

00:19:21:27 – 00:19:21:52
Shane Whaley
Right.

00:19:22:07 – 00:19:35:13
Agent Palmer
It’s one of those weird things where in the states, finding legally or illegally some of these things is either easy or like a needle in a haystack. So some of it, it’s like, I don’t even know where I’d watch that.

00:19:35:18 – 00:20:05:21
Shane Whaley
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. It is available. Certain channels, shall we say. I have it on DVD because for me, again, it’s made the transition. This is not a action led series. A lot of this the scenes are at Whitehall government offices, six offices. There’s politics, there’s dialog, but the story is compelling. The story is realistic. It is of its time during the Cold War and the machinations that went on, you know, within government itself.

00:20:05:21 – 00:20:22:47
Shane Whaley
And it does pose a lot of questions. There’s one great episode, I think it’s called It Couldn’t Happen Here, where they start off, the CIA guy in London who’s friends with the SAS officer, head of station there, and he’s like, yeah, you know, the FBI did Kennedy a CIA guys can’t stand the FBI because we know they did it.

00:20:22:52 – 00:20:49:57
Shane Whaley
And then, you know, the Brit guys that what would never happen here. And then, of course, later in the episode, we find out a cabinet minister is outed as being a KGB agent. The prime minister won’t ask him to resign. And the guy who criticized the Americans is like, we have to take him out, you know? So, and that’s in the space of, you know, 50, 55 minutes that that whole turn about comes so really well-written, written by a guy, Ian McIntosh, who had served in the Navy, also done a better than a bit of this.

00:20:49:57 – 00:21:16:00
Shane Whaley
And that, shall we say, in The Secret World and has a fascinating story himself, because during the shooting of the third series of the Sand Baggers, he was flying with a friend and his girlfriend on the Alaska coast and disappeared to this day has never been found. They didn’t find the wreckage, didn’t find the bodies. There’s all these conspiracies that he defected to the Soviet Union, or he was taking photographs of, you know, Russian submarines and no one knows where he went, or what happened to him.

00:21:16:00 – 00:21:33:38
Shane Whaley
So that’s an added little bit of mystique around the show as well. And these actors, you know, they were filming this third season when this guy had gone missing and he used to be on set and helping them and everything else was the writers. So that’s that’s a series that I enjoy. I would also say Callan is absolutely superb.

00:21:33:43 – 00:21:52:03
Shane Whaley
Worked my way right through the Callan series. Again, he is a guy, Edward Woodward, who was basically doing the dirty jobs for the government. It was a clandestine department that would go out and assassinate people and was never talked about, you know, really gritty. The guy doesn’t, you know, yeah, it’s I don’t want to give too much away if you haven’t watched it.

00:21:52:03 – 00:22:14:00
Shane Whaley
But that character, Callan, Edward Woodward did a fantastic job. If you just watch one of them, you know, I think they’re on YouTube, you know, go check them out. It’s, it’s all of its time, of course, in the 60s. Fantastic TV show. What else? I enjoyed coming more modern. I enjoy Deutschland 83. Okay. Which is spy of a sort, of course.

00:22:14:05 – 00:22:38:33
Shane Whaley
A lot more action driven, but I enjoyed that because I also host another podcast called radio GDR, which is about the history of East Germany. So I have a lifelong interest in, in German Democratic Republic. So obviously that features heavily, as does, you know, Operation Eagle Archer. And here’s the cool thing about spy fiction. So Deutschland 83 is basically about Bill Archer is going on, which was a big NATO exercise, you know, nuclear strike test.

00:22:38:37 – 00:22:59:04
Shane Whaley
And the, well, it this happened in real life, and I didn’t know that until I went to the German Spy Museum in Berlin and read about the original spy that this was kind of based on. And he, he told the KGB or the Soviets like, no, this is just an exercise. But the Soviets, like, we’ve got this intelligence, they’re mobilizing their troops, they’re moving missiles around, is going to kick off, right.

00:22:59:04 – 00:23:23:40
Shane Whaley
They’re going to launch the big one at us. The Politburo is absolutely freaking out. And luckily, the spy was able to tell them, no, this is just this is just an exercise. It’s not anything that I happen, you know, and another spy who saved the world. But again, that fiction is rooted on what actually happened. And it’s fascinating when you I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction this year, and I keep saying to people that spy fact is often stranger than spy fiction.

00:23:23:40 – 00:23:40:49
Shane Whaley
And some of the things that I’ve been reading, I’m reading this brick of a book called Defend the Realm by Christopher Andrew. It’s the authorized history of MI5, and it is a brick of a book, and I’ve had it in my bookcase for a long time, because all the Amazon reviews are like, this book is really dry, it’s really dry.

00:23:40:49 – 00:23:56:26
Shane Whaley
And I’m like, oh, okay. I asked on the spy regroup, and people were like, no, you need to read this. Yes, it’s academic, but still read it. And what I decided to do was I downloaded it on audible, okay, all 40 hours of it. Right. And I thought, I’ll do an hour a day and I’ll treat it like a lecture.

00:23:56:31 – 00:23:57:12
Agent Palmer
Sure. Yeah.

00:23:57:16 – 00:24:19:23
Shane Whaley
And I’ll consume it that way. So I’m about 75% of the way through it. But, any, any spy right this out there, any budding spy writers you have to read or listen to this book because the amount of plots that they talk about and you just roll your eyes and you think, wow, that actually happened. Well, as opposed to reading a spy novel, when something happens, you think, oh, that that would never happen in the real world, you know?

00:24:19:23 – 00:24:34:38
Agent Palmer
Well, but this is the authorized history, right? So imagine the volumes of like, still redacted stories and plot lines and things that you’re not allowed. I’m sure it’s probably five times as deep, probably.

00:24:34:38 – 00:25:09:30
Shane Whaley
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, it’s authorized that this is never happened before. And it was to celebrate, I think, the 100 year anniversary of MI five. So, just like one of the things in that I was reading about, which was just crazy and I need to research this a bit more. So during the before D-Day, when there was all these things going on, all these plots by the Brits to confuse the Nazis, where the landings were going to take place, and the British built a kind of cardboard cutout, a decoy oil refinery near Dover, to fool the Germans to think, oh, the attack is going to come from Dover

00:25:09:30 – 00:25:20:53
Shane Whaley
into Calais, okay, rather than where it eventually went. So not not that they just build this decoy building. They had the King of England go to this decoy building and officially open it.

00:25:20:58 – 00:25:23:38
Agent Palmer
In order to make keep up the Germans.

00:25:23:38 – 00:25:37:24
Shane Whaley
Yeah, yeah. And he just like all of you read that in a book, right? You know, if they had written on the King went to open the, you know, cardboard cutout of an oil refinery bin. Oh, come on, that’s pushing it a bit. But if you read it, these books that go, whoa, actually happened, you know, it’s incredible.

00:25:37:24 – 00:25:56:04
Shane Whaley
And that there are so many things have gone on in espionage history. And I just think, wow, if I was a spy writer, I’d be all over this book because there’s so much inspiration here. And it was the same. I just finished watching The Spy with, Sacha Baron Cohen. Okay. Which was based on the real life spy, Eli Cohen, from Mossad.

00:25:56:04 – 00:26:13:30
Shane Whaley
And he went into Syria undercover. And there was, there was a movie made of this a few years ago, and I watched that giant droid because, you know, something I’m not familiar with or not well, read up on Israeli intelligence. And then I watched The Spy. It’s six parts on Netflix. I thought they did a fantastic job, but I thought, well, how much of this is true?

00:26:13:34 – 00:26:33:26
Shane Whaley
Sure. And how much was adapted. Right. Because okay, I’ll give you an example of it at one point. So Cohen gets taken to the Golan Heights, where the, Syrian defensive positions are. They’re all underground. And part of his job is assignment is to find out where these defensive positions are so that Israel can bomb them. And he’s like, wow, you know, he said to the soldiers, it’s really hot here.

00:26:33:26 – 00:26:50:31
Shane Whaley
And he’s like, yeah, we don’t get any shade because he’s a businessman undercover. He sends all these eucalyptus trees to the front. So so they can grow up and have shade. Right. So of course, what happens two years later? The Israelis are like, well, where those trees are, that’s where we got a bomb. And again, you read that in the book and you go, oh, was that dumb?

00:26:50:40 – 00:27:04:37
Shane Whaley
But no, that’s what actually happened. And I’m doing a lot of research right now. I want to produce an episode about what in The Spy was actually true. And I have to say, the vast majority of the adaptation is actually based on fact. Incredible.

00:27:04:42 – 00:27:26:35
Agent Palmer
Do you find yourself I mean, now as as these things are coming together for you, are you drawn more towards the nonfiction side as like these things, you know, they appear more fantastical and, you know, they are slightly unbelievable. It is nonfiction kind of getting a new shine for you.

00:27:26:40 – 00:27:44:12
Shane Whaley
I would definitely say this year I’ve been reading a lot more nonfiction, but I still I’m trying to alternate nonfiction fiction, nonfiction fiction. And the problem is, you read a book like Defend the Realm, and I guess it is like a half a million words in that thing, right? It’s huge. I don’t have a gun at home. Right.

00:27:44:12 – 00:27:48:31
Shane Whaley
But if somebody broke in, I would just throw that out.

00:27:48:36 – 00:28:05:23
Shane Whaley
And you know the problem with it? Well, the good thing about a book like that is there are so many holes you can go down. So I’ve been ordering books on some of the, you know, the biographies I can’t read. You know, to read more about Stella Remington, now the former head of first female head of MI five, somebody I know she’s written spy novels as well.

00:28:05:23 – 00:28:21:41
Shane Whaley
Now. It details some of her work as a case officer in the 70s and 80s. And I’m like, oh, when I when I read up on that, I want to read up on Dick white. There’s a guy called Chapman Pincher who, was pretty controversial journalist with certain allegations that the former head of MI5, Roger Hollis, was a KGB spy.

00:28:21:41 – 00:28:40:31
Shane Whaley
And I’m like, okay, I want to read that now. You know, spy Spycatcher, which I don’t know if you’re familiar with, with the with spy catcher, Peter Wright spy catch, you know, so I was a kid when this was all in the news. So he’s an ex MI5 officer who basically wanted to publish his memoirs, not memoirs, but a book on his time in the and and MI5.

00:28:40:31 – 00:29:03:01
Shane Whaley
He was a real conspiracy theorist. And he also alleged that the head of MI5 was was KGB. And I remember in the news growing up, because this must have been mid 80s and the Thatcher government was trying to ban the book, and he ended up winning a court case in Australia. So it was published in Australia. But everyone basically admits today that that book is so full of holes and tinfoil that it’s not worth reading.

00:29:03:01 – 00:29:06:29
Shane Whaley
But now I’m like, well, now is the time. I’ll go read that book.

00:29:06:33 – 00:29:31:21
Agent Palmer
Well, yeah, because you can even put that spin. I mean, treat it like fiction, then it’s fine. Like, you know, whatever it is. Look, we’ve been hovering around one piece that I want, I want to cover is the Cold War, the piece de resistance of spy content is there because obviously we get some stuff in modern times and there’s some stuff that happens before it.

00:29:31:26 – 00:29:47:21
Agent Palmer
But all of the things that I end up really, really putting, like in my top ten is all Cold War related. Is that the end all be all like, yeah, there’s things that will come up here and there, but the Cold War is it for espionage.

00:29:47:26 – 00:30:10:58
Shane Whaley
So for me personally, I would absolutely agree with you. Majority of my reading is Cold War related, and I do find it hard to read books that are set in modern times. And I’m doing that. I just read a book by, Dov Alphen. Really good book called A Long Night in Paris, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a good story, good characters, compelling, twisty turny plot.

00:30:10:58 – 00:30:39:30
Shane Whaley
I, I enjoyed it, but I kind of have to be dragged up into the 21st century to, you know, and it’s the same with movies. I, I have a hard time. Like, I watch the rhythm section on the weekend with Blake Lively. I have a really hard time watching modern stuff. I much rather go back to my back catalogs of Carlin or Sandbag as well, the Saint or whatever, and watch those Cold War, you know, era TV dramas and movies than what comes out today.

00:30:39:30 – 00:30:57:52
Shane Whaley
I find that even I’ll give you an a good example of that killing Eve. Okay. Huge hit. And I’ve only just now started watching it because I’m kind of like, it’s modern, it’s not really Cold War, etc.. But, you know, there was a great Cold War. There’s, there’s a lot like, I’ve got Cambridge spies here.

00:30:57:52 – 00:31:14:08
Shane Whaley
That was a, I think it was BBC who made that. And I want to go back to that, you know, because of what I now read in defend the Realm around Philby and co and to read it. So for me, I think the Cold War was all the ingredients. You know, there was, just so much going on in that history, all the different, all the world was involved, all the different theaters.

00:31:14:19 – 00:31:36:09
Shane Whaley
And I think also what’s really interesting about that writing is the lack of technology. So you read a spy, you read, well, they masquerade as spy books, right? Let’s be honest. The approach towards you mark greenies. Yeah. All these bestsellers you see in bookstores today, you know that a crammed with technology and very little human intelligence. Whereas back in the Cold War, they didn’t have drones.

00:31:36:14 – 00:31:38:52
Agent Palmer
Yeah. No, certainly it was all human intelligence.

00:31:38:52 – 00:32:03:23
Shane Whaley
Yeah, yeah. All right James Bond, how these gadgets in the movies, don’t get me wrong. But like, you didn’t really have them to that extent in the books, you know. And that’s what makes the books appealing as well. But yeah, that’s the human intelligence there. And for me as well, I think, you know, you stuck behind the Iron Curtain, you know, you know, the Americans are not flying in a lot of gunships to get you out, but you get caught behind the curtain.

00:32:03:24 – 00:32:09:35
Shane Whaley
Your chances are you you’re going to get executed or you’re going to a long time in some horrible jail. Yeah. So I agree with you.

00:32:09:44 – 00:32:36:21
Agent Palmer
So I mean, that’s all heavy stuff. Yeah. But spy fiction or espionage has a rich comedic history as well. I mean, Austin Powers is just probably the most modern take, but like, I’m thinking my first introduction to spies is a toss up. I’m not sure what came first. It’s either James Bond or Get Smart.

00:32:36:26 – 00:32:36:48
Shane Whaley
Right?

00:32:36:58 – 00:32:59:19
Agent Palmer
I’m not sure which came first, but they were both very much around the same time and I et get smart up even though I didn’t have the knowledge and background. Like by the time I watch Austin Powers, I’ve watched all the bonds, so I understand the source material. I didn’t understand the source material when I was watching Get Smart, but I absolutely ate it up.

00:32:59:24 – 00:33:00:04
Shane Whaley
Yeah.

00:33:00:08 – 00:33:07:28
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Where do you fall as far as like, your favorite comedic looks at at the genre?

00:33:07:33 – 00:33:20:38
Shane Whaley
I have to be in the right frame of mind, and I think that was where I kind of struggled with killing Eve. It is actually very humorous. It’s a very humorous show in parts, and I kind of struggled with that a little bit, you know, because if I’m going to watch Austin Powers, I know what I’m in for, okay?

00:33:20:38 – 00:33:37:51
Shane Whaley
I’m like, you are the comedic or you should be hard hitting, cold drama. So, for instance, one of my guilty pleasures is the, Casino Royale from the 60s. Yeah. David Niven and Peter Sellers. Yeah. And I know what I’m getting. I know it’s a farce. Right? But I enjoy it. I mean, come on, who doesn’t like bagpipes?

00:33:37:56 – 00:33:39:52
Shane Whaley
Turn into machine guns. Come on.

00:33:39:57 – 00:33:58:21
Agent Palmer
I know, I mean, that one. That one is superb. I mean, that that is absolutely amazing. But there’s. And maybe we don’t consider it humor on the same level, but in all of the bond movies up through Craig, there are some zingers as one liners.

00:33:58:35 – 00:34:15:02
Shane Whaley
Yeah. And you would argue one of the criticisms against the Moore era, the Roger Moore, is that he played it with too much humor. And I think there is a lot of argument to that. He definitely was the most humorous, lighthearted bomb, because if you watched an interview with Roger Moore, he said, this will how did you make it different from Sean Connery?

00:34:15:02 – 00:34:35:11
Shane Whaley
And he said, well, if you think about it, Britain’s most secret spy walks into any bar worldwide and the barman knows what he drinks. So I kind of played it with that attitude. And there are moments, you know, certainly for your eyes only where he’s a cold. You know, when he kicks the guy off the cliff lock, you know, that’s.

00:34:35:11 – 00:34:53:16
Shane Whaley
That was very on Roger Moore when he slapped Maud Adams in Man from the Golden Gun. Maybe, but otherwise he definitely played it with a lot more humor. And you can argue that Moonraker in particular is is the whole movie is hilarious, right? And that’s why it’s not not a classic in the same way that I think spy who loved Me is.

00:34:53:20 – 00:35:17:49
Agent Palmer
Now, a friend of mine has been spending his time researching every bond movie and getting a friend of ours who’s not a bond fan, right, to watch them, and they watch it and it’s it’s a it’s a Patreon exclusive link in the show notes. But one of the things that’s interesting is Ed, who’s hosting it and doing the research and loves bond, is introducing Bill to these movies not in order.

00:35:18:00 – 00:35:45:20
Agent Palmer
So he’s basically doing it in, you know, here’s Connery’s first, here’s Moore’s first, and he’s alternated it in a way that like, you never see the same bond within two films. But they’re ratings as to what they think are great. They’re fairly in line, which is unique in itself. But but from Russia with love is at the top of Ed’s list, as it would be.

00:35:45:20 – 00:36:12:22
Agent Palmer
He’s he’s a huge bond, bill. It’s near the bottom. Wow. And I wonder because Bill’s not coming from that lifelong fandom. Yeah, I wonder too. Like is it a scenario where we know too much? Do you know what I mean? Like, if we could go back clean slate, watch all these movies for the first time, we’re in love with so much of what we know that isn’t even in that film.

00:36:12:31 – 00:36:28:34
Shane Whaley
Yeah, I think it goes back to is your favorite bond the one that you see first? And I think certainly in my case, I can’t swear to it, but I’m pretty confident it would have been. I have a feeling it was live and Let die, because that I still have a childish love of that movie. In the same way though, that I.

00:36:28:35 – 00:36:49:25
Shane Whaley
And this is the other thing when it comes to bond, right? If you asked me at 13, list your favorite bond movies and you ask me now 45, my favorite bombs, they’d be very, very different. They’d be very, very different. Like, I watch you Only Live twice, but I love that one. Love the setting. Okay? It’s ridiculous in parts where they make Connery look like a Japanese.

00:36:49:25 – 00:37:06:12
Shane Whaley
Right. And all that. But I was a kid again. Who wouldn’t like Little Nelly? Yeah. Who wouldn’t want to have a little Nelly in the garden and go off and, you know, fly around the town shooting rockets at people? I mean, come on. Yeah. It’s superb flying into a volcano. It all kicks off the Orlando I mean as a kid absolutely loved it.

00:37:06:12 – 00:37:28:59
Shane Whaley
And that’s what I’m saying sometimes. And I see this big argument online about bond movies I think, you know, really the you look at it through different lenses as you are when you, when you’re a teenager versus as you are now. And you know, now, I think, you know, probably if I was watching the bond movies for the first time, my favorite bond would be a toss up between Connery and Craig, quite, quite frankly, because I think they play it in a more realistic fashion.

00:37:29:04 – 00:37:46:29
Shane Whaley
But as I said, I mean, I used to like this is quite sad, but we would move around while I was a kid and I would tell people my name was Roger. That’s how much I love Roger. Well, I’d meet new kids, they knock the door. My mother said to someone, you’re looking for Roger. Who’s Roger? I’d be going parachute right whilst I did the eyebrow, but that’s how much I adored the guy.

00:37:46:29 – 00:37:51:20
Shane Whaley
But now I would say that Craig or Connery for me would be probably a better bond.

00:37:51:25 – 00:38:31:31
Agent Palmer
So aside from age and life experience, how has your reading of nonfiction, as well as the other things you read, especially Lee. You know, you said you read economics. How does all that color, what you’re consuming when it comes to espionage? Because I’m not that versed in economics and some of these books that are very much about spy craft, you know, they talk to these experts so that your hero of the day, whoever it is, can learn enough about economics to fool whoever he needs to fool and foil whatever he needs to foil.

00:38:31:46 – 00:38:55:06
Agent Palmer
But when you spend time and you go off after you know your youth and read about economics and come back to the genre, now, you have a greater understanding of that chapter as an example, like show has that, you know, kind of poked a hole in things for you as like, well, now I know more. I’m not an expert, but I’m, I’m slightly learned in this subject.

00:38:55:19 – 00:38:59:30
Agent Palmer
Or do you get more things to read into those pockets?

00:38:59:34 – 00:39:33:23
Shane Whaley
Yeah. I mean, I think generally I try and be really varied with my reading. Like I’ll read politics, I’ll read history, I’ll read business books. But then, you know, my escapism is spy and Cold War history. So I kind of just I try and be a sponge with, with these books, particularly on the nonfiction side, because I want to learn what actually went down, you know, because I’m fascinated by tradecraft and how that lot, especially because we just said without the aid of technology, you know, you, you know, these poor novelist novelists today have to, you know, jump through hoops to write a compelling story because they could just pick up that mobile phone and

00:39:33:23 – 00:39:37:43
Shane Whaley
call, hey, he’s in, he’s in the shopping mall or whatever. It’s funny. You know.

00:39:37:52 – 00:39:55:36
Agent Palmer
If we go back to some of our favorite, I don’t care if it’s, you know, a television show or a movie. Anything before 1970 can be solved in the first five minutes with the cell phone and a smartphone, maybe in the first minute because it’s like. But I’ll just Google it.

00:39:55:41 – 00:40:09:53
Shane Whaley
Yeah. And I was watching a 70s British cop show. They The Sweeney, which I love. And even in that, like he runs to the phone box to call in and the phone box has been vandalized. Right. So that’s they could be programed a lot. When I was growing up, the phone booth not.

00:40:09:53 – 00:40:14:59
Agent Palmer
Working, or if you don’t have a quarter or a nickel or a dime or whatever it is in that particular.

00:40:15:00 – 00:40:31:58
Shane Whaley
No. Absolutely. So I you know, I feel for the writers today, they they’ve also got to get to grips with technology. And I guess that’s why some writers, you know, they say, okay, I’m gonna write a spy book, but I’m going to set it in the 70s because they haven’t got to deal with with that. You know, it’s very, very different now.

00:40:32:11 – 00:41:04:59
Agent Palmer
I want to talk to you about one. It’s about spy fiction. But, with Spybrary, you have not only created a podcast, you’ve created a community. Was that something you expected, or was it like a happy accident? Because I, I go on Facebook once a month, but I do scroll through this library. Quote unquote forum, as it were, when I do go on, because it’s it’s fascinating, though I’m glad I’m limited to once a month because my to read list is big enough.

00:41:05:03 – 00:41:27:14
Agent Palmer
Yeah. And I’m going to get through these Dayton’s. Like there are other things I’m reading, right. But like I’m going to get through these Dayton’s and then I will open it up and probably scroll back through and whatever. But like that community is so supportive. And so I don’t think you could have cultivated a better community if you had like picked all the pieces yourself.

00:41:27:14 – 00:41:29:33
Agent Palmer
So what has that been like?

00:41:29:38 – 00:41:50:30
Shane Whaley
Yeah. That was a big surprise to me, because the whole reason that I launched by was I had read all the Samsung books and I’m like, wow, I want to talk to people. It was a phenomenal experience and that I mentioned the car earlier on, but it was really the Samsung books that inspired me to start the spy podcast, because I had so many questions or so many things I wanted to talk about.

00:41:50:35 – 00:41:57:43
Shane Whaley
I’m jealous of you because you haven’t read me yet, and you’re about to get on a white knuckle ride roller coaster.

00:41:57:45 – 00:42:00:38
Agent Palmer
Yeah, it’s where it’s where? 18 novels that I’m in for.

00:42:00:43 – 00:42:08:19
Shane Whaley
No. There’s nine. Okay in it. Samsung novels. And then there’s Winter, which is a prequel. Okay. Which is worth with your time reading when you done the nine.

00:42:08:21 – 00:42:19:58
Agent Palmer
Oh, no. No, I mean, listen, I’ve, I’ve read all of the nonfiction. I’ve, I read er shipwreck. I’m reading all of Dayton. Right. So I’m nothing’s getting skipped I can’t wait.

00:42:20:02 – 00:42:36:05
Shane Whaley
No, no. Absolutely. So there’s nine of those and it’s I’m going to pick my words carefully because I don’t want to be spoilers. But yeah I’m going to leave it there. Maybe maybe we can chat either on spy or back here once you’ve read all the Samsungs. And yeah, we could do a roundtable, get, Rob Mallows on who runs the Dating Dossier website.

00:42:36:10 – 00:42:52:03
Shane Whaley
He was on episode one. Yeah, roundtable could be fun on that. Maybe I need to read them again. They’re also fun to listen to. An audible, by the way. Okay. That. Very well. So anyway, I digress, and that’s why I set up the podcast. I thought, I want to talk about Samsung. I want to find other people out there.

00:42:52:03 – 00:43:10:37
Shane Whaley
And I had conversations with Robert and also very kindly came on episode one, and it kind of grew from there. Now, I did put some rules in place with the community, and I would really advise anyone who wants to create a Facebook community online you to do this. As I just said, right? No discussions on modern day politics.

00:43:10:41 – 00:43:27:32
Shane Whaley
You’ll have to be about spy books, movies and TV. Like, I won’t tolerate anything that’s outside of that, because once you do that, like, weird, a couple of people, you know, the two toxic words on the group, you know, Trump or Clinton. And I had to kick people out because they kept bringing that up. And then, you know what?

00:43:27:32 – 00:43:46:58
Shane Whaley
It’s like someone puts a pro Trump post up, the Hillary people come out and I was like, you know what? This is not what this group is about. I don’t give a toss what your politics are. As long as you’re interested in spy, let spy TV. You’re welcome. So we we’re really strict on that rule. And I think that created a safe environment for people to come on and just chat about the books they’d read.

00:43:47:03 – 00:44:06:42
Shane Whaley
And it’s it’s phenomenal. There are lots of polls every day. I have discovered a lot of, new authors for me. I just read the Dolly, Dolly spy that was written in 1967 by a guy called Adam Dement. He was, in his early 20s. He wrote four books and disappeared. Talk about Austin Powers. And that was written in 67.

00:44:06:42 – 00:44:30:01
Shane Whaley
It was certainly not non-pc, but a really fun, quick read. Like, I wouldn’t have discovered that. I wouldn’t have discovered Jeremy Dunn’s Charles Charles Cumming, Mick Herron, who is a phenomenal, you know, talk about modern day spy writing McLaren of the Slow Horses series is absolutely phenomenal reading. But again, you know, I’ve had Mick on the show and he says he was very inspired by Dayton.

00:44:30:08 – 00:45:03:13
Shane Whaley
So a lot of these modern day writers are inspired by the greats. And, you know, we got a couple of, shall we say, how do I, with this correctly, of a certain vintage spy barons of a certain vintage who come on. And they were they were so lucky because they were reading the Flemings as they were coming out for the Modesty Blaise as they’re being published, I, I’m playing catch up if you go in my spy right next door here, I would say 90% of the books I have were written in the 60s and 70s, because that for me is the golden age of spy fiction, you know, Cold War era spy writing.

00:45:03:17 – 00:45:11:08
Shane Whaley
And I’m starting because I’m starting to read a bit more modern stuff. But I’m still I’m playing catch up here, the Charlie Muffin series. So he. Are you familiar with Charlie Muffin?

00:45:11:08 – 00:45:12:11
Agent Palmer
Yes, a little bit.

00:45:12:11 – 00:45:31:30
Shane Whaley
So that whole series, they they were like, I think 14 books written. And there was a movie made of the first one which which I love. I’d never heard of him. Now he’s one of my favorite spies, and I’m, you know, with with Charlie Muffin. I said, okay, I’m going to read one every three months. I’m not going to do what I did with Dayton and fly through the whole lot with the car.

00:45:31:35 – 00:45:40:40
Shane Whaley
I’m going to really savor these. But what that means is then when good stuff is coming out today, I’m finding it hard to get to it because I’m still stuck way back in the 60s and 70s.

00:45:40:40 – 00:46:04:33
Agent Palmer
Well, and what’s so for me? Douglas Coupland and Len Deighton are two authors. I’m currently reading everything they ever wrote. And, you know, I read and when I, I have a rotation going so I don’t same thing. So I don’t go too far. But what it means is Copeland’s got, I think, 7 or 8 more books for me.

00:46:04:38 – 00:46:19:34
Agent Palmer
The one I’m girlfriend in a coma, which I’ll probably finish this week is, was published in 98. Right. Dayton I’m on game set match now. So that 70s early 70s. So like I’m playing catch up.

00:46:19:34 – 00:46:22:14
Shane Whaley
This is he wrote this in the 1880s.

00:46:22:19 – 00:46:47:21
Agent Palmer
So I’m for those two authors. I’m not even in this sent this century. Yeah. Yeah. And then what happens is because I alternate those with other pieces of maybe, you know, nonfiction, you can’t read nonfiction. And you know this better than anyone. You can’t read nonfiction without adding three more books to your list. It’s just how it works.

00:46:47:33 – 00:47:13:32
Agent Palmer
So I’m I’m excited that I’m going to have some hard decisions in maybe a couple of years when I finally finish the Dayton’s and it’s like, all right, what’s next? You know, because I’m not going to stop reading spy stuff, but I’m also just kind of like, well, I’m never going to catch up. Like, I read clearly. I’m never because I read so much, so vastly different things.

00:47:13:32 – 00:47:36:24
Agent Palmer
And I’d like to call myself a well-rounded reader. I’m really not like I’m I’m well-rounded for me. Like I haven’t gotten back. I want to get back to science fiction, which I haven’t read since I was a, you know, a kid. And I want to get back to fantasy, which outside of maybe rereading a talking and I’m reading through Terry Brooks’s stuff, I haven’t really gone elsewhere.

00:47:36:24 – 00:47:40:23
Agent Palmer
So, like, there’s so much you’re always going to be behind, though.

00:47:40:23 – 00:47:58:57
Shane Whaley
You’re right. And and I buy these books. I hit a lot of used bookstores and I buy these books because my view is, should I be lucky enough till I live into my 80s? You know, I’m going to read these in retirement, so I’ll buy them now. Sure. And like, you know, like probably 60% of the books I have my library I haven’t got to yet.

00:47:59:02 – 00:48:15:09
Shane Whaley
Just like, oh, I buy that now. At some time in the future I’ll be retired and I’ll just drink tea and read all day long that for me stream. Right. And that’s why I do it. And I buy these books, and you write about going down rabbit holes. I give you a really good example of this. So I’m reading, obviously, the Defend the Realm.

00:48:15:09 – 00:48:37:04
Shane Whaley
And there was a British cabinet minister, John Stonehouse, and he later transpired he had been working for the Czechs, the STB intelligence. Right. So he was basically on the payroll of an Eastern bloc country during the 60s with the British government. So he ended up going to jail for fraud and a heck of a story. Again, you know, stranger than fiction.

00:48:37:09 – 00:48:53:42
Shane Whaley
But the reason I bring it up today was he wrote a couple, he wrote four spy novels, and he wrote one called Ralph, and apparently it was voted as like one of the worst spy books ever written. And a lot of people saying, well, we kind of think it was biographical. And there was a scene in there of how he got seduced to work for the Czechs.

00:48:53:54 – 00:49:09:01
Shane Whaley
What have I done? I’ve gone on eight books I’ve just ordered Ralph, even though I’ve been told that it’s really bad. I’m like, no, I want to read this, though. I’m intrigued. You know, what was John Stonehouse is writing like? And, you know, it’s so funny how quirky turns we can take, you know, always going for the big classic.

00:49:09:04 – 00:49:25:59
Shane Whaley
It’s just something that will pique your interest. And that’s the phenomenal thing about espionage is, is there’s just so much history out there, so many stories. Well, you know, things you can read up about that, that it’s just continually fascinating to me. This isn’t like I say, in my 20s, it was all about James Bond and Simon Templar and people like that.

00:49:26:09 – 00:49:46:20
Shane Whaley
Now I want to read about these other guys. Also, you talk about movies, the lives of others. I’m not sure if you watch that movie. No German made movie. One of my favorite kind of spy movies or set in East Germany. Really, really well-produced, well-acted, good storyline, but chilling in terms of surveillance by the state on its citizens.

00:49:46:25 – 00:50:07:52
Shane Whaley
The Spy Who came in from the cold mid 60s that that was, that was released in movie format. Not a happy movie at all. No, not a happy movie, but Burton Burton plays Alec Leamas superbly. It’s well directed, good script right up there. You know, my two favorite spy movies, his funeral in Berlin and The Spy growing from the cold.

00:50:07:52 – 00:50:09:24
Shane Whaley
You know, they’re very, very different.

00:50:09:31 – 00:50:11:00
Agent Palmer
They are.

00:50:11:05 – 00:50:28:55
Shane Whaley
But I think for me, I always say to people when I read Ian Fleming, I want to be a secret agent. When I read Le Carre, I’m quite happy being an accountant. Yeah, because you read or you watch The spy coming from the colony, who would want to do that job? You know, the guy goes to prison for his cover.

00:50:29:00 – 00:50:42:11
Shane Whaley
Yeah. You know, it’s like you just think there’s no way. And even in a reading nonfiction, you’re like, yeah, it doesn’t have the glamor and the glitz. This is like, I respect all those who work in our security services, because I could not do that job.

00:50:42:13 – 00:51:13:34
Agent Palmer
Yeah. I mean, to me, it goes to, you talk about the differences between bond and like, more grounded spies, that first 15 minutes of Ipcress where he, he gets up and he goes, and he’s just there, they’re steak. It’s just it’s just like a permanent stakeout. Like we’re not in a car. There’s, you know, they’re we’re in an attic keeping an eye on, and it’s just like, none of that is glorious, right?

00:51:13:34 – 00:51:37:03
Agent Palmer
Like it’s the it’s literally as anti bond as you can get your sedentary, your solitary and nothing much of anything really happens. And it’s just like okay, so so the fact that this has become even a genre, when probably more of the realism is that it’s. Yes.

00:51:37:08 – 00:51:57:18
Shane Whaley
Reading the car, we got in a lot of trouble in the 60s. People in the security services hated him because of how he depicted the services. They thought, this guy’s going to make it really hard to recruit people is obviously the car he had served in the in the Secret Service. So they they didn’t like that realist coverage of what it was like to be a spy.

00:51:57:23 – 00:52:13:15
Agent Palmer
So what, outside of spy fiction, are you actually reading like like take, take, take espionage as a whole, nonfiction and fiction out of it. Are you still reading about economics and politics or. You know.

00:52:13:20 – 00:52:37:47
Shane Whaley
I do, I do, I’m fascinated by ideas and I it’s quite funny. If, Freud came into my study, he’d probably become a tattooist, because, you know, I’ve got Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto and I’ve got books by, you know, Mises. I’ve got, I forget his name now. Anyway, you know, those who have free market economics, I’ve got those market economics.

00:52:38:01 – 00:52:57:49
Shane Whaley
I just love reading about ideas and concepts. And, Hayek, that’s who I meant. Friedrich Hayek I love concepts, and I love and I love ideas. What I prefer is rather than theory, but, oh, this country tried this and this is what happened. Okay. These were the actual results. I’m really into that. It’s quite hard to get that kind of data.

00:52:57:54 – 00:53:19:11
Shane Whaley
I love travel books. Obviously worked in the travel industry for, two decades. Right now I’m reading a book called Stalin’s Nose, which was about a guy’s journey through, Eastern Europe in 1990, obviously just after the wall came down. That’s a fascinating read. It’s a time capsule of a book where you have all these countries that suddenly have freedom and what they were doing with it.

00:53:19:16 – 00:53:43:59
Shane Whaley
So I enjoy that. I enjoy biographies, so I try and and be broad with my reading, but generally I can confine it to politics. History, military history is another one I read a lot of. So I’ve got to tackle those big dating ones that are out there. Actually, it was funny. The other day I did download Bomber on Audible, and I was really surprised that there is an introduction read by Leonard himself.

00:53:44:01 – 00:54:17:55
Agent Palmer
Oh wow. I might have to do that just because I, I mean, bomber is one of those books that, again, I didn’t know what what to expect. And, it was just when you find out it’s just 24 hours, basically like it’s it’s just one battle from all sides. Yeah, that’s bomber and it’s, it’s so amazing because it’s it’s the drop in water of a, frozen lake.

00:54:17:55 – 00:54:21:47
Agent Palmer
And it’s like, well, now we get to see all the ripples.

00:54:21:52 – 00:54:38:55
Shane Whaley
And I yeah, I got it on audible because I was, I was due to fly to Europe, and I was at the gate and it got canceled because I fly now I’m listening to a podcast on audiobook. I don’t really bother with the in-flight entertainment. And I got, oh, I got it on audible rather than read it because I like the idea of the different voices, okay.

00:54:39:06 – 00:54:55:37
Shane Whaley
From all the different people in that, that, that book. So I thought it might be easier to kind of really visualize this rather than reading it. If every character is in a different voice, it’s more like a play, if you will, than a straight audiobook. Yeah, but I haven’t. I listened to the intro and I can say I was shocked because it was Len himself reading it.

00:54:55:37 – 00:55:06:25
Shane Whaley
I’m not sure what year he did it, and it’s quite lengthy, and I don’t know if that intro was in the book. Maybe Rob can tell us, but yeah, I was like, wow, this is really cool that he did that. But I haven’t actually got into the story yet. Yeah.

00:55:06:30 – 00:55:23:26
Agent Palmer
And I, I also know about bomber that so this is what my research told me. And I think it’s actually in the hardcover book, somewhere in the back. Is that, that maybe that was the first book written on a word processor? Yes.

00:55:23:26 – 00:55:24:11
Shane Whaley
I believe you’re right.

00:55:24:21 – 00:55:24:56
Agent Palmer
Because.

00:55:24:56 – 00:55:25:15
Shane Whaley
I believe.

00:55:25:15 – 00:55:50:10
Agent Palmer
You’re right, I did, I then I did a separate post on that because I read the whole book and at the back on like there’s a paragraph where he talks about a little bit of the process and thanking this woman who helped tape it for him. Yeah. And when I did the research, he had like half of his house, the second floor of his house wall removed in order to move.

00:55:50:10 – 00:55:53:05
Agent Palmer
This was a picture.

00:55:53:10 – 00:55:59:52
Shane Whaley
There’s a photo of his front window, I think, being taken out to to bring it in. Yeah, sure. He was that big. Yeah. Absolutely incredible.

00:55:59:58 – 00:56:24:05
Agent Palmer
Incredible. And it’s. But there’s those little pieces that that’s just that book that has that little extra. Right. Like all of these books have that little extra. It’s amazing. And I mean, I’ve talked about it on this show before and I will probably like to my dying day. This will be one of the hills. I die out like people need to read more.

00:56:24:09 – 00:56:37:24
Agent Palmer
I it doesn’t matter. Like if if you’re still listening, well, spy fiction could be your thing. It doesn’t have to be. You can read fantasy or sci fi, but like and I, I count audible as part of that because it’s the source material.

00:56:37:24 – 00:56:38:40
Shane Whaley
Yeah, absolutely.

00:56:38:45 – 00:56:49:03
Agent Palmer
But people need to consume more from a non-visual perspective. It’s not all movies. Movies are great, but you should get to the source material.

00:56:49:18 – 00:57:10:20
Shane Whaley
I think. Also, I’d go a step further rather than saying people should read more. I think people need to be open minded more. You know, get out of your your thinking, be open to other ideas and and you’ll enjoy your reading a lot more if you do that. I think that that’s key. Actually. It’s interesting that I, I try and fight my way out of of spy left and trying to broaden my reading.

00:57:10:20 – 00:57:23:13
Shane Whaley
And I’ve just bought there was a book that came out because apparently David Bowie was a voracious reader. Yeah. And I didn’t know that about him until recently. And apparently when he was filming one of his or yours science fiction, I was it man who fell to the works to the.

00:57:23:13 – 00:57:24:03
Agent Palmer
Man who fell to Earth.

00:57:24:07 – 00:57:41:05
Shane Whaley
They filmed it in New Mexico, and he rocked up with this massive kind of chest of books and like, the whole kind of like the director was like, taking the mick out of him and like, oh, what do you do it? And it was it his time he was off the drugs and he was reading or whatever. But there is a book and it’s like, you know, 100 books that Bowie read with notes on each of those books.

00:57:41:05 – 00:58:00:32
Shane Whaley
And I bought it and I’m like, wow, I’m going to I’m going to have a go at this. At some point I’m going to say like once a month, say, right, I’m going to try one of the books that Bowie read within reason. There’s a few there that I know I just won’t be able to read. But I’m like, yeah, that’s what I’m going to try and do to broaden my reading somewhat out of of spy military history and history, because I think that’s important.

00:58:00:32 – 00:58:27:18
Agent Palmer
I think it’ll be interesting to see how like what your percentages like, are you going to go 79 for 100? Like I wonder what what that percentage is going to be like. That’s the thing you I mean, I’m a I’m a proponent of blogging because it’s like my first thing, but like that’s thing where you should do like a separate like just even if it’s just a paragraph, just like, here’s my journey through Bowie’s hundred.

00:58:27:19 – 00:58:45:26
Shane Whaley
It’s true, it’s true. But you know that the dilemma I have is I really want to do that. But I get frustrated when I’m reading something unless it’s really, really good. And I think I’m trudging through this when I could be reading a spy classic. Right. Okay. And I’m like, we only have a certain amount about no, this is just a personal thing for me.

00:58:45:30 – 00:59:01:28
Shane Whaley
And I don’t like there’s very few books in this world I’ve read, or tried to read and given up on. I usually trudge on to the end. I just one of the there was a luxury book, The Naive and Sentimental Lover, which was not spy based at all. And I think I’ve got a hundred pages in it, so I can’t do any more or less.

00:59:01:28 – 00:59:13:23
Shane Whaley
It’s just I’ll do it. So but then in my mind, I have this conflict, like, yeah, I could be reading a classic from the 70s here instead of plowing through this book. And I think we all suffer that. Right.

00:59:13:23 – 00:59:35:02
Agent Palmer
Well, I, I’ve so in my I’m not I don’t like like, shining a flashlight on it. But there’s one book in the last decade that I hate read. I got like 50 pages in, and I was like, this is bullshit. This is no, no, this is horrible. Like, you don’t know what you’re talking about, but I finished it.

00:59:35:07 – 00:59:59:39
Agent Palmer
It’s the only negative review on my entire site. Wow. So good luck finding that people, because I’ve, I’ve, I’ve written a lot of book reviews. It is a book review. I’ll give people that, but I’ve maybe I’ve been lucky in that dating even like some of the dense history books. And I’ll give you an example. Fighter I thought would be exactly like bomber.

00:59:59:43 – 01:00:33:00
Agent Palmer
Yeah. It’s not so bomber is a historical fiction of this one battle over 24 hours. Fighter is all about the technology and the history of that technology that went into the fighter planes around the Battle of Britain. And while on paper, fighter and bomber would seem very similar. They’re not. But there’s something about dating where I got lucky in that I still read it like I’m still invested.

01:00:33:05 – 01:00:49:36
Agent Palmer
Yeah, and I’ve been lucky, but I’m. I’m one of those people that we talk about where, like, I’m going to finish this, I started it, I’m going to finish this. It doesn’t matter. I can’t not let’s find out what happens.

01:00:49:36 – 01:01:01:14
Shane Whaley
You’re also lucky that he has not published another book that I’m told he’s finished, which is all about the history and the workings of the fountain pen. I mean, look, I obviously.

01:01:01:26 – 01:01:04:59
Agent Palmer
I mean, it’s we’re he still could.

01:01:05:03 – 01:01:10:05
Shane Whaley
He still could. He still could. I mean, he’s knocking on a bit now, right? So, but, he still could.

01:01:10:05 – 01:01:21:13
Agent Palmer
It would be amazing, though, for me to finally get through. I have a lot more books left. I think there’s, like, 17 or 18 more books left if I, you know. Oh. My. You read.

01:01:21:18 – 01:01:22:41
Shane Whaley
Did you read? Only when I laugh?

01:01:22:41 – 01:01:23:30
Agent Palmer
Yes.

01:01:23:35 – 01:01:26:53
Shane Whaley
I like to see that one gets panned a lot, but I liked it. Oh, really?

01:01:26:58 – 01:01:57:16
Agent Palmer
Liked I haven’t watched the movie. I want to watch the movie. I haven’t watched the movie yet. But that book was fashioned because it was the first time I had seen a book where each. It wasn’t in chapters, but each section break was a different perspective, and it was done well. Like, you know, I know I’m sure people can pan the story, but to switch between perspectives on a like a it’s sometimes it’s one page, sometimes it’s 5 or 10.

01:01:57:21 – 01:02:20:20
Agent Palmer
But to to do that and not overlap, which he doesn’t really do and not forget what the perspective is like, it was just an amazing ride. It was almost like watching pick your sport, right? Like watching, a basketball game, but being able to flip between both sets of home announcers.

01:02:20:35 – 01:02:44:42
Shane Whaley
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you’ll find that he did something similar. Well, ish spoiler free book six of the Samsung series. So all the Samsung books are told in the first person until you get to book six and book six is written third person. And it’s remarkable because you get to see to see things or read about things that happened in the previous five that Bernard didn’t tell us.

01:02:44:44 – 01:02:45:59
Agent Palmer
Oh, okay. Nice.

01:02:46:03 – 01:02:50:19
Shane Whaley
So it’s it’s a really interesting device that he, you know, apply it into his sixth book.

01:02:50:19 – 01:03:19:25
Agent Palmer
Now, I will ask you this before going in. So, I just recently finished The Voyage of the Gerald Shannara trilogy by Terry Brooks, and those books were released one month apart. That whole trilogy, which means he wrote them all together. I only research my date into what’s next, so I don’t know beyond that. But for game set and match, I ordered the hardcover and all three of them together.

01:03:19:30 – 01:03:29:04
Agent Palmer
But were they released close together or were they, spaced out? Like, do we know if he wrote this as a series?

01:03:29:09 – 01:03:47:16
Shane Whaley
He did. What I can tell you is he mapped out the whole part. Is causing any allergy, any allergy. Forgive me, which basically is nine, a series of nine books. He mapped the whole thing out okay. For he he didn’t just write one and it did. Well, I’ll write more. Okay. He mapped the whole thing out, which is remarkable.

01:03:47:21 – 01:03:52:13
Shane Whaley
That’s, in terms of did he publish anything else in between? I don’t know, to be honest. I mean.

01:03:52:24 – 01:04:12:24
Agent Palmer
He might have I mean, I, I have, I have date and dossier. I think it’s the dating dossier. It’s a book. Yes. And that’s what I’ve been you I’ve just been like, I haven’t even read that book. I’ve just been keeping it around for the back, which it was printed like there were books published after it.

01:04:12:24 – 01:04:34:17
Agent Palmer
So I’m going to have to do some harder research, but like, I just flip back and forth and it’s just me going through the bibliography in the back going like, all right, so the next fiction book was published in 1971. The next nonfiction book was 74. All right, I know what I have to read next. That’s how I’ve been doing this whole journey through Dayton’s bibliography.

01:04:34:17 – 01:04:36:17
Agent Palmer
It’s been fascinating.

01:04:36:24 – 01:04:40:40
Shane Whaley
Yeah. I mean, I mean, I was like I said, I’m envious that you’re in for such a treat.

01:04:40:45 – 01:04:49:27
Agent Palmer
Well, we’ll we’ll have to, whether it’s here or on your show. We’ll we’ll have to see where I’m at when I get done with those nine.

01:04:49:27 – 01:05:02:32
Shane Whaley
Yeah, yeah. We will. The other thing I meant to say when we were talking about bomber was the other bit of, cool bit of trivia. Are you familiar? It’s a pretty silly question, but I’ll ask it. Are you familiar with Lemmy and Motorhead?

01:05:02:32 – 01:05:02:58
Agent Palmer
Yes.

01:05:03:08 – 01:05:04:49
Shane Whaley
So he wrote a track called bomber.

01:05:05:03 – 01:05:06:19
Agent Palmer
Because of that book.

01:05:06:19 – 01:05:24:39
Shane Whaley
He was inspired by Len Dayton’s book. I think there was even something in the sleeve notes him thanking Len or referencing Len. So he wrote, I mean, he was Lemmy was, was the lead singer and basis of Motorhead was unfortunately passed away, was a huge student of military history, and, he wrote bomber. The track bomber, one of the famous ones.

01:05:24:39 – 01:05:26:19
Shane Whaley
And that was because of that novel.

01:05:26:24 – 01:05:45:53
Agent Palmer
I mean, I didn’t know because that would mean Lemmy and I have something in common in our love for Dayton. So that’s. Yeah. And on that bombshell. Yeah.

01:05:45:58 – 01:06:11:56
Agent Palmer
Before I forget, for those of you interested in the Ed Bonds with Bill Patreon series that I spoke of, where Ed is peppering Bill with James Bond facts while coming from a place of fandom where as Bill, at least at the beginning of the series, only culturally knows 007 save for a movie here or there. I bring it up now, as I did in my conversation with Shane, because that series is a great example of what it’s like getting a fresh perspective.

01:06:12:01 – 01:06:34:58
Agent Palmer
Bond isn’t as well known to everyone as it is to certain people. Anyway, head over to Patreon.com slash Wicked Theory and you know, for just $1 you can listen to that series for longtime listeners of this show here. Bill was the first guest on this show, so you kind of know what you’re in for. Now to close the case file of this episode with Shane Whaley.

01:06:35:09 – 01:07:00:41
Agent Palmer
I think the two large takeaways that we came to were surprisingly not related to the topic of spy fiction, although they can be liberally applied to anything, people should consume more source material and people should keep open minds. And if you’re keeping an open mind, you’re probably more likely to try out new source material. It’s amazing how closely those two things can be intertwined.

01:07:00:53 – 01:07:28:21
Agent Palmer
In fact, I believe they speak for themselves. So whether you’re already a fan of spy fiction and you were nodding your head or shaking it vehemently in disagreement, or if you’re going to sample some of the author’s movies or series we discuss, let us know the journey you’re about to undertake. As my journey with Bernard Sampson is also about to unfold, maybe you’ll join me, or perhaps you’ll open something new, or at least something new to you.

01:07:28:26 – 01:07:50:13
Agent Palmer
Thanks for listening to The Palmer Files episode 22. As a reminder, all links are available in the show notes. And now for the official, unredacted business. The Palmer Files releases every two weeks on Tuesdays. If you’re still listening, I encourage you to join the discussion. You can tweet me at Agent Palmer. You can tweet the show at The Palmer Files, and you can tweet Shane at Spybrary.

01:07:50:13 – 01:08:13:41
Agent Palmer
That’s spy PR r y. You can see the complete Spybrary podcast dossier at Spybrary.com. Or listen wherever you are listening to this podcast. Don’t forget you can see all of my writings and rantings on Agent palmer.com. Meanwhile, the unredacted links mentioned in the show will be available in the show notes. Email can be sent to the show at the Palmer Files at gmail.com.

01:08:13:41 – 01:08:33:01
Agent Palmer
If you have any feedback on this or any previous episode, or if there’s a topic or guest you’d like me to consider, you can hear more of me. In the meantime on our liner notes, a musical conversation podcast with host Chris Maier and my other gig as co-host of the podcast digest with Dan Lizette.

01:08:33:05 – 01:09:09:25
Agent Palmer
He.

01:09:09:30 – 01:09:15:06
Agent Palmer
Was all right. Shane, do you have one final question for me?

01:09:15:11 – 01:09:23:50
Shane Whaley
I do, if I can get Len Dayton to call you today. But you’ve only got time for ten minute conversation. What? One question would you ask him?

01:09:23:54 – 01:10:06:23
Agent Palmer
Oh, man. I think the one question I would ask him is just, you know, what inspired him initially to start writing? I think I would end up talking to him about process because this show has devolved into what would have been conversations. I always end up talking about process with people, always. I don’t know, like, I guess it’s something in me that I always wanted to know about and I just now I have voice to that, but I would probably end up talking to him about process and writing and, you know, you said he drew out the then the narrative, so to speak, for those nine books.

01:10:06:37 – 01:10:21:42
Agent Palmer
I’m curious about, like how you have the foresight to do that. And does he just sit down and write? Does he outline everything yet? It would be about process in some way, shape or form. And then I’d have a heart attack.

01:10:21:47 – 01:10:33:48
Shane Whaley
Yeah, I’ve had an email from him actually. And yeah, he, he very he’s very humble guy. Very concerning the success he had as a writer. He’s a very humble guy.

01:10:33:53 – 01:10:54:53
Agent Palmer
I could only be lucky enough to be that humble, like I try to be. I’m trying. I’m not very much, Hey, look at me kind of guy. Even though, you know, I. I think you’re the same way. Like, we both host podcast, but we’re not, like, out there trying to get in the spotlight. We’re just trying to share something with the world.

01:10:54:57 – 01:11:07:54
Shane Whaley
And this is why Spotify didn’t give me a $100 million to go move over to Spotify platform. You know, like someone else we know maybe we should be a bit more like that. And then we could just sit and read books all day long.

01:11:07:58 – 01:11:10:59
Agent Palmer
That would be great. I mean, that’s the life. That really is the dream.

01:11:11:08 – 01:11:11:52
Shane Whaley
That’s the dream.

–End Transcription–

This transcription was processed by PalmerTech 3.1 and may contain errors for HUMINT (human intelligence).