'Confessional' by Jack Higgins leaps to mind; like you, I found myself rooting for the assassin/terrorist as the final chapters unfolded.

John le Carré worked for both MI5 and MI6, so his novels are extraordinarily detailed and accurate. Tom Clancy was fastidious about research, but he was a bit of a walt. I have a fondness for Andy McNab's early work, particularly Immediate Action.

>>6272
Whilst someone's on the topic of spies, I'll recommend this.

>>6272
>John le Carré worked for both MI5 and MI6, so his novels are extraordinarily detailed and accurate

No they aren't.

"For a while you wondered whether the fools were pretending to be fools as some kind of deception, or whether there was a real efficient service somewhere else.

Later in my fiction, I invented one.

But alas the reality was the mediocrity. Ex-colonial policemen mingling with failed academics, failed lawyers, failed missionaries and failed debutantes gave our canteen the amorphous quality of an Old School outing on the Orient express. Everyone seemed to smell of failure."

>>6274

I don't know anyone who's worked at MI5 or MI6 that I know of but that sounds like a fairly accurate description of every pillock from the doughnut I've ever had the misfortune of being around.

>>6275
All those qualities in the same person? Or did one remind you of an ex-colonial policeman and another a failed missionary? I like this characterisation because it's particularly timeless so you can just quote it in lieu of an updated opinion.

>>6274
>>6275
I'm reliably informed that the lads up the doughnut have a strong sense of their own importance and their duty of secrecy. So much so that an acquaintance of mine that contracted there would never fail to at least once have someone there saying "How does he know that? He's not supposed to know that!"

HQ is quite an interesting place by all accounts. The media/conference centre there was put in primarily to save time because people were getting sick and tired of having to book a path and an escort to a meeting room, and a different path and escort back from it.

Thanks lads. I've also scanned a few other places, pretty much null and void unless it's history or hard sci-fi.

You might want to check out novels by William F. Buckley. I wouldn't put them in the same league as John Le Carre; they're more like James Bond novels (and not very good ones at that). But Buckley was in the CIA and some of that comes through in his writing.

Gérard de Villiers

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/magazine/gerard-de-villiers-the-spy-novelist-who-knows-too-much.html

Poor choice of words on my part lads. I should've written 'occupational tradecraft'. None of the novels I mentioned deal with espionage (not as a major theme, at least) but various illicit activities like coup d'etat (The Dogs of War), assassination (The Day of the Jackal), and investigative work (The ODESSA File).

But thanks anyway.

>>6306
Didn't realise William F. Buckley wrote novels. I've seen a lot of his political stuff, and his famous spat with Gore Vidal ("Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered."), but I'll have to check his novels out.

>>6309

I mostly remember him for his editorials. Always seemed a bit full of himself, but he did have an education and semblance of culture that set him apart from his colleagues.

>>6308

You might enjoy The Art of Deception and The Art of Intrusion, by hacker Kevin Mitnick. The hustles are not as long and involved as in The Day of the Jackal, but I would define them as "occupational tradecraft".

>>6317
Thanks lad. As long as they are plausible, they are okay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY_nq4tfi24

Why don't Americans speak like this any more? I hate a majority of their accents, and their mainstream one the most.

>>6335

It was once fashionable for Americans to speak with a hint of RP. This mid-Atlantic accent was widely taught in elite schools, but fell out of favour after the war. The reason for this decline is disputed, but I'd argue that it was part of a broader anti-intellectual culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent

>>6336
That was a good read. Thanks mate.

>>6335
What on earth does "their mainstream one" mean?

>>6336
RP declined in England too, and there's nothing "anti-intellectual" about it.

>>6338
The one their newscasters use, you fucking mong.

>>6339
Their newscasters use a variety of accents, my abrasive little friend.

>>6340
Mate, everyone who isn't a fucking moron knows what I mean. So you can fuck right off.

>>6341
>everyone who isn't a fucking moron knows what I mean
This is .gs.

>>6335

I attribute it mostly to TV and radio. It is not just the mid-Atlantic accent that is dying out, but all local dialects (I've had people ask me if I was from Canada when traveling overseas).

American newscasters speak with a variety of dialects, but there is a "consensus" accent that one can deduce by listening to different people. Over the years, that consensus has drifted farther away from the mid-Atlantic accent into a midwestern accent, and this is something I DO attribute to an anti-intellectual trend, as it is closer to the speech of an average American than to that of a boarding-school student.

>>6343
But our newsreaders use regional accents these days too. That someone's accent is "closer to the speech of an average American than to that of a boarding-school student" is simply anti-elitism, not anti-intellectualism.

>>6344
They are more or less the same thing.

>>6344

Yes, using the common speech can be a sign of healthy populism, but in the case of, say, Fox News, it's a celebration of ignorance and of struggling to be the biggest idiot in the room to prove your loyalty.

>>6355
No, they really aren't at all.

>>6355
"The big problem with Fox News is their accents" said no sane person who has ever watched Fox News.

>>6344
Is it just me or do news channels (particular BBC News) make a special effort to recruit newscasters from Ireland, Wales and (to a lesser degree) Scotland? The proportion of strong regional accents seems higher than the actual proportion of people in the UK with those accents.

>>6357
There has been a drive to increase "regional" representation in the past decade.