史上最杰出的20本间谍小说

From ‘Kim’ to Deighton, le Carré and the modern giants, Jake Kerridge picks the twenty greatest spy novels of all time

从《吉姆》到戴顿，从勒卡雷到现代文学巨匠，杰克·克里吉选出了史上最伟大的二十本间谍小说。

Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901)

“Here begins the Great Game,” declares Mahbub Ali when he recruits the young Kimball O’Hara, a happily independent teenage orphan, into the British Secret Service in 1890s India. Ali meant the battle between Britain and Russia for supremacy in Asia; he wasn’t to know that Kim would mark the inauguration of another Great Game – the tradition of espionage-as-entertainment. Aside from its vast influence on later spy fiction, Kipling’s magical novel certainly played a part in the personal mythology of Harold “Kim” Philby, whose extraordinary career would shape the spy novel’s development in the second half of the century.

《吉姆》鲁德亚德·吉卜林 （1901）

当马赫布卜在十九世纪九十年代将金博尔﹒奥哈拉这个年轻快乐却无依无靠的孤儿招募进印度的英国秘密情报局时，他宣告说：“伟大的游戏开始了！”他所谓的“伟大的游戏”是指英国和俄国在亚洲的霸权之争。可他还不知道，吉姆的加入将标志着另一场伟大游戏的开始。除了对后世的间谍小说产生巨大影响外，吉卜林的这本魔幻小说也无疑在哈洛德·金·菲尔比的个人传奇中起了重要的作用，而后者所创下的非凡事业则在上世纪下半叶塑造了间谍小说的发展。

The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers (1903)

Childers, a clerk in the House of Commons and a hero of the Boer War, wrote his only novel as a warning. He wanted the political establishment to realise that Britain lay in greater danger of invasion from Germany than from her old enemy, France. “There is no sensation, only what is meant to be convincing fact,” he declared. At first glacially paced, and always heavier on sailing detail than action, the plot concerns two friends who unmask a fiendish traitor as they cruise their converted lifeboat along the Frisian coast.

《沙洲之谜》厄斯金·柴德斯（1903）

柴德斯是英国国会下议院的议员，也是布尔战争中的英雄。这是他的唯一一本小说，以示对政府的警醒。他希望政治团体能够认识到，英国受到德国入侵的危险要远远大于法国，虽然后者才是英国的老对手。柴德斯说：“书中没有什么哗众取宠的内容，只有让人信服的事实。”小说的开场节奏缓慢，对航海细节的描述远远多于动作场面。整个情节讲述了两个朋友驾驶着他们改装的救生艇在弗里西亚海岸巡航时揭发一个邪恶叛徒的故事。

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (1907)

This is a book that demands to be read twice in quick succession: once, quickly, to find out what happens; then again, more slowly, to luxuriate in Conrad’s incomparable sentences. (Most subsequent spy writers were perhaps wise to keep their prose fairly functional.) The agent of the title is the seedy porn shop owner Verloc, who is ordered by a foreign power to blow up Greenwich Observatory, although, in a le Carré-ish twist, the purpose of this terrorist outrage is to frame a group of anarchists. Its ending may be the saddest and most savagely ironical of any in fiction.

《秘密特工》（又译为《间谍》）（1907） 约瑟夫·康拉德

这是一本需要连续阅读两遍的书：第一遍，快速地找出发生的故事；然后，再慢慢地看一遍，让自己完全沉浸在康拉德笔下那些无可比拟的语句中（而后来的大多数间谍小说作家很明智地让他们书中的散文段落写变得更具功能性）。小说标题中所指的“秘密特工”，是一家下流店的老板维洛克，此人受到外国势力的指使去炸毁格林威治天文台。尽管在勒卡雷式的情节转折中，该恐怖行为的目的是要嫁祸于一群无政府主义者。故事的结局也许是小说中最让人悲哀也最具讽刺意味的部分。

The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915)

Enter Richard Hannay, ramrod-backed hero on the run, falsely accused of murder, while himself in pursuit of a master of disguise who wants to steal vital British defence secrets. There was nothing kinky about Buchan –when made a peer, he took the title Baron Tweedsmuir – so if you want a

blonde in handcuffs, watch the Hitchcock film. The original novel is an almost entirely woman-free zone, although in its sequels Sir Richard does marry the equally plucky Mary, a nurse and fellow agent. Slightly dim, Hannay still makes a surprisingly effective spy, although he does break his

cover whenever he feels like giving a foreigner a good thrashing. Buchan’s novels are easy to

patronize, but extremely difficult to better.

《三十九级台阶》（1915） 约翰·巴肯

由于被诬陷谋杀，背脊挺直的男主角理查德·汉内一直被追踪而四处逃亡；与此同时，他自己也在苦苦追寻一位想要盗取英国国防重要机密的伪装高手。巴肯本人并没有什么古怪变态之处——他可是被授予了特威兹穆尔男爵的贵族——所以如果你期待有戴着手铐的金发女郎的话，那去看希区柯克导演的电影吧。原小说中几乎完全没有女性角色，尽管在续集中理查德先生确实和同是间谍兼护士的玛丽小姐结婚了，而玛丽小姐的勇敢和坚决可一点都不逊色。汉内看起来稍显愚笨，但他仍然恰到好处地塑造了一个了不起的间谍形象，虽然他在想要痛打外国人一顿时暴露过自己的身份。布坎的小说容易浅读，但要深入非常困难。

Ashenden, or the British Agent by W Somerset Maugham (1928)This collection of stories drew closely on Maugham’s own experiences as an intelligence officer in Europe during the First World War. Half of the original draft allegedly had to be burnt after Winston Churchill declared that it would be in breach of the Official Secrets Act. Maugham broke new ground in conveying the drudgery of spying, for all its periodic excitements. John le Carré declared him “the first person to write about espionage in a mood of disenchantment and almost prosaic reality”. The mood was too much for Goebbels, who denounced the book for its typically British cynicism.

《英国特工》（1928） 威廉·萨默塞特·毛姆

这个故事集是基于毛姆在一战期间作为欧洲情报员的亲身经历而写成的。据称，在丘吉尔宣布这部作品违反了法律后，有一半原稿不得不被烧毁。毛姆笔下的间谍工作日常显得乏味单调，紧张和刺激只是周期性的事件，这种描述方式别具一格。约翰·勒卡雷宣称毛姆是“第一个以清醒的、不带有任何幻想的、几乎是平淡乏味的现实笔调来讲述间谍活动的作家”。不过这种笔调不为戈培尔所喜欢，他谴责这部小说带有典型的英式犬儒。

Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler (1940)

The hero is Graham, an English engineer vital to the successful rearmament of the Turkish Navy. On the voyage home from Istanbul, he tries to work out which of his fellow passengers must be the Nazi agent trying to assassinate him. Like most Ambler protagonists, Graham is hopelessly ill-suited to being a spy; but, thanks to the assistance of an unexpectedly decent socialist, he comes good. Ambler was the first writer to use the spy novel as a vehicle for left-of-centre sympathies, but he was not remotely po-faced about it: in this novel, the obligatory nice Lefty admits that he only became a socialist to annoy his wife.

《恐惧之旅》（1940）埃里克·安卜勒

故事的主人公叫格雷厄姆，他是一名英国工程师，对土耳其海军成功重整军备起着至关重要的作用。在从伊斯坦布尔回家的航途中，他试图在同行的乘客中找出那个竭力想要暗杀他的纳粹特工。像安卜勒笔下大多数的主人公一样，格雷厄姆没有当间谍的潜质，但他出乎意外地获得了一名正派的社会主义者的帮助，这才使得事态能化险为夷。安卜勒是第一位将间谍小说作为一种工具来表达对左翼分子的同情的作家，但他并没有将其刻版化：在这部小说中，那位义不容辞的好心的左翼分子承认说，他之所以信奉社会主义是为了激怒他的妻子。

Assignment in Brittany by Helen MacInnes (1942)

MacInnes, who wrote more than 20 spy novels, would probably advise any budding espionage writers looking for fieldwork that the next best thing is to marry a spy. Her husband, Gilbert Highet, was an agent for MI6 as well as an eminent Oxford classicist. This, her second novel, concerns a British intelligence officer who tries to spy on Nazis in Brittany by impersonating a French local for whom he happens to be a dead ringer. MacInnes pulls off this difficult literary conceit, making you believe that the interloper can really fool his doppelganger’s mother, fiancée and mistress. So authentic was the novel’s depiction of espionage behind enemy lines that it was used to train real-life Allied spies.

《布列塔尼任务》（1942） 海伦·麦金尼斯

麦金尼斯写过20多本间谍小说，她可能会对任何想要进行实地调查的间谍小说新手这样建议：接下来你要做的事情就是和一位间谍结婚。因为她的丈夫是著名的牛津大学古典学者吉尔伯特·海特，也曾为军情六处工作过。这是麦金尼斯写的第二本小说，讲述了一名英国情报员试图通过冒充一位和他长得极像的当地法国人来窥探布列塔尼的纳粹分子。麦金尼斯成功地完成了这种极具困难的文学构思，她让你相信这名冒充者真的能骗过和那位法国原型的母亲、未婚妻和情人。这本小说对敌人后方间谍活动的描写得如此真实，以至于它被盟军用于现实的间谍训练中。

From Russia, with Love by Ian Fleming (1957)

The fifth and best Bond novel. You wouldn’t know it from watching Robert Shaw and Sean Connery in the film but when Red Grant tries to shoot Bond on board the Orient Express, our hero stops the bullet with a handy copy of an Eric Ambler novel. It could be read as a metaphor for the way Fleming scuttled the gritty reality that Ambler had brought into the genre. But for all his books’ absurdities, Fleming has many fine qualities. As Ambler himself put it, “Critics rarely remark on how well written the James Bond stories are. I suppose that with a man as civilised and amusing as Mr. Fleming, good writing is taken for granted.”

《 俄罗斯之爱》（1957）作者：伊恩·弗莱明

这是第五部也是最好的一部邦德系列小说。可能单看罗伯特·肖和肖恩·康纳利在电影中的表演你还意识不到这点，但当看到瑞德·格兰特试图在东方快车上射杀邦德时，邦德用手边的一本埃里克·安卜勒的小说止住了这颗子弹，你也许就懂了。这也许可以被视为一个暗喻，表示弗莱明打破了安卜勒为间谍题材所带来的那种残酷现实感。除了小说中的一些情节过于荒谬以外，费莱明的作品仍然有许多优秀的品质。正如安卜勒本人所说：“批评家们很少评论詹姆士·邦德系列小说写得如何。我觉得一个像弗莱明先生这样文明而又有趣的人，写出好的作品总是理所当然的。”

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene (1958)

Greene made his reputation in the Thirties with thrillers noted for the sort of grimness that is usually described as “realistic”, but this later book, written after he had actually worked for British Intelligence, suggests he came to feel that a spirit of irreverent farce was more fitting. Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana, reluctantly agrees to spy for the British to fund the extravagances of his daughter Milly (who, in an unmistakably Greene-ish touch, complains that she’ll lose her faith if she doesn’t get the gifts she’s prayed for) and ends up inventing reports when he can’t find anything out. Castro complained that it dealt with Batista’s Cuba too frivolously, but it’s really British Intelligence that’s being sent up something rotten.

《哈瓦那特派员》格雷厄姆·格林（1958）

在上世纪三十年代，格林因他所著的恐怖小说而成名。他的小说中的恐怖常常被人描述为“特别现实”。但这本写于他为英国情报部门工作之后的晚期作品，则表明他逐渐感到荒诞的闹剧氛围可能更合适。沃莫德是一名哈瓦那的吸尘器推销员，他不太情愿地同意了为英国人做间谍，以此来资助女儿米莉过着豪奢的生活（米莉曾用一种典型的“格林式”的口吻抱怨说，如果她得不到她所祈祷的礼物，她就会失去信仰）。但他最后却一无所获，只能胡编乱造地报告了一番。卡斯特罗抱怨说，小说过于轻率地描述了巴蒂斯塔政权下的古巴，而真正正在腐化的却是英国的情报部门。

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré (1963)

When the young David Cornwell, an intelligence officer working for MI6, published his pseudonymous third novel, it was hailed as the first work of fiction to present the business of espionage as it really was. Le Carré himself would say that this was precisely what the book didn’t do. As he once told me: “My service passed it, on the grounds it was not reflective of the truth, and gave away no secrets.” It is better regarded as a great feat of imagination. Although le Carré has written many fine novels in the ensuing half-century, he has never quite recaptured anything as thrillingly transgressive as the cynicism of his anti-hero Leamas, who describes the rest of the Secret Service as “people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives”.

《柏林谍影》（又名《寒风孤谍》《受冷漠的人》） 约翰·勒卡雷

这是年轻的英军情六处情报员大卫·康威尔（即勒卡雷的原名）出版第三部匿名小说，它被称赞为第一本如实再现间谍活动的虚构作品。勒卡雷自己却说这正是这部作品没有做到的。正如他曾这样告诉我那样，“我所在的部门审查并通过这本书，是因为它没有反映任何事实，也没有泄露任何秘密。”因此，将之视为丰富想象力的伟大杰作更为合适。尽管勒卡雷在接下来的半个世纪里写了许多优秀的小说，但他再也没有从来创造出一个像书中那位利马斯一样喜欢冷嘲热讽、令人惊心动魄的反英雄角色了，这个角色曾把情报部门的其他人描述为“一群通过扮演牛仔和印第安人来照亮他们腐化生活的人”。

A Taste for Death by Peter O’Donnell (1969)

Definitely not to be confused with the P.D. James novel of the same name, this is instead the highlight of a series of novels about Miss Modesty Blaise, underworld-boss turned freelance enforcer, employed by Sir Gerald Tarrant of the British Secret Service. Modesty, who began life in a comic strip that ran in the Evening Standard for 38 years, is often described as a female Bond but is in fact a much more interesting character inspired by a young Balkan refugee O’Donnell met while serving in Persia in the war. A Taste for Death takes Modesty and her sidekick Willie to Panama and Algeria, with a finale in an abandoned fort in the Sahara. Progressive readers will be glad to hear that, in this one, Modesty doesn’t resort to her favourite trick: distracting baddies by taking off her top.

《死亡的味道》彼得·奥唐奈（1969）

千万别把这部小说与P. D.詹姆士的同名小说相混淆。这是《女谍玉娇龙》系列小说中最最精彩的一部。女谍玉娇龙曾当过黑社会头目，后来变为一名自由的雇佣兵，受雇于英国特工部的杰拉德·塔兰特爵士。玉娇龙在伦敦《标准晚报》的连环漫画中活跃了长达38年之久，常为人们誉为“女邦德”，但实际上她是年轻的巴尔干难民奥唐奈在波斯服兵役时突发灵感创造的一个更为有趣的人物。在《死亡的味道》中，玉娇龙和她的搭档威利来到了巴拿马和阿尔及利亚，故事最终在撒哈拉沙漠的一个废弃的堡垒中结束。进步的读者会很欣喜地听到，玉娇龙在这部小说中并没有采用她最喜欢的伎俩：脱去外衣以分散敌人的注意力。

Seventeen Moments of Spring by Yulian Semyonov (1969)

It seems only fair to pick a novel from the other side of the Iron Curtain, but Seventeen Moments of Spring is far from a token inclusion. It’s one of the most suspenseful thrillers ever written. Semyonov composed it at the instigation of Yuri Andropov, the KGB chief who was on a mission to redeem the dismal reputation of the Soviet intelligence services. It’s set in the final weeks of the Second World War when Russian agent Maxim Isaev, disguised as a Nazi official, is trying to prevent a peace deal between the Germans and the Americans. The book spawned one of the Soviet Union’s most popular television series in the Seventies, and Isaev has become a folk hero in Russia. Propaganda at its most entertaining.

《春天的十七个瞬间》尤里安·谢苗诺夫（1969）

为了公平起见，似乎应该从“铁幕”的另一边选一本小说入选，但《春天的十七个瞬间》远非只是作为一个代表而入围。这是史上最具悬疑性的惊悚作品之一。谢苗诺夫是在克格勃首脑尤里·安德罗波夫的鼓动下进行的小说创作，而安德罗波夫的目的是要挽回苏联情报局惨淡的名誉。故事发生在第二次世界大战的最后几周，俄国特工马克西姆·伊萨耶夫乔装打扮成纳粹官员，试图阻止德国人和美国人之间的和平协议。由这部小说所改编的电视剧在上世纪七十年代的苏联成了热播剧，而伊萨耶夫也由此成为俄罗斯的民间英雄。这可算得上一次最具娱乐性的政治宣传了。

Other Paths to Glory by Anthony Price (1974)

Price’s novel is about connecting the dots between two types of warfare. Somebody is murdering survivors of the Battle of the Somme as well as the historians who have been talking to them; the crimes are somehow connected with a summit between nuclear powers. Our hero, the reluctant but brilliant spy David Audley, unravels a plot convoluted even by Price’s standards. The dialogue is superbly comic and there is a wonderful sense of history as an almost living thing, and of the nobility of historians who feel obliged to seek out the truth, no matter how unpalatable.

《荣耀之路》安东尼·普莱斯（1974）

普莱斯的小说讲述了两种类型的战争之间的联系。有人正在谋杀索姆河战役中的幸存者，以及那些和幸存者们交谈过的历史学家；而这些犯罪与核大国峰会之间有着某种联系。故事的主人公，不情愿但才华横溢的间谍大卫·奥德利，揭开了一个即使以普莱斯的标准来看也算是极为错综复杂的阴谋。小说对白非常滑稽，有一种妙不可言、极其生动的历史感，也凸显了那些历史学家们的高尚——他们觉得自己有义务去寻找真相，而无论真相多么令人难以接受。

The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (1980)

In the Seventies, Ludlum suffered briefly from what may have been the most profitable bout of amnesia in history. It inspired him to create the character of Jason Bourne, a man with no memory but outstanding survival skills, which become very useful as he traverses the globe to find out not only who he is but also why both the CIA and someone called Carlos the Jackal want to kill him. Despite Ludlum’s dogged refusal to lapse into plausibility, any niggling critical doubts the reader may have will be crushed by the sheer power of his storytelling. The Matt Damon films do this and its two sequels justice, but beware novels written under Ludlum’s name since his death.

《伯恩的身份》罗伯特·陆德伦（1980）

在上世纪七十年代，陆德伦经历了一次可能是史上最赚钱的失忆症。他由此受到启发创作了一个名为杰森·伯恩、没有记忆但生存技能超强的人物。为了弄清自己的身份，也为了弄明白中央情报局和一个叫“豺狼”卡洛斯的人为何都想杀他，杰森·伯恩开始他的穿越世界，而他那超强的生存技能在这趟旅途中发挥了极大的作用。尽管陆德伦拒绝承认故事的真实性，但读者任何吹毛求疵的批判质疑，都会被作者强大的叙事能力所粉碎。由马特·达蒙主演的相关电影以及后两部续集都演得恰到好处，但一定要谨防那些陆德伦去世后还打着他的名义所推出的小说。

Berlin Game by Len Deighton (1983)Fleming made spy fiction globally popular, but it took Deighton in the Sixties with novels such as The IPCRESS File to make it hip. His finest work, though, came later, in the Eighties, with this trilogy (completed by Mexico Set and London Match) about the disillusioned SIS agent Bernard Samson. Less exuberant than his early books but more subtle, Berlin Game is a terrific feat of plotting

that out-le-Carrés le Carré in its sardonic portrait of Secret Service office politics. Tarantino (who had Max Cherry read a copy in Jackie Brown) should hurry up and film it, like he said he would.

《柏林游戏》（1983）连·戴顿

弗莱明让间谍小说在全球范围内流行起来，但在上世纪六十年代，戴顿则以《伊普克雷档案》这样的小说让间谍小说变得时髦。然而，他最出色的作品是完成于上世纪八十年代、讲述觉悟的军情六处特工伯纳德·萨姆森的三部曲（由《柏林游戏》《墨西哥陷阱》（Mexico Set）《伦敦比赛》（London Match）组成）。《柏林游戏》不如他的早期作品那般精彩，但却更为微妙。《柏林游戏》在情节设计上是一个了不起的壮举，其对情报局权术的讽刺刻画甚至连勒卡雷笔下的作品都有所不及。塔伦蒂诺·昆汀得像他曾说过的那样，赶快把它拍成电影。

Los Alamos by Joseph Kanon (1997)

The best spy novels used to play on their readers’ concerns about contemporary events. In the past couple of decades, however, the boom in historical fiction has brought a proliferation of faux-period pieces in the espionage genre. Alan Furst, William Boyd and Robert Harris have all written fine examples, but none of them quite beats Kanon. This, his first novel, is set in 1945, when intelligence officer Michael Connolly is dispatched to the officially non-existent Los Alamos to investigate whether the murder of a Manhattan Project security officer is just a crime of passion or has something to do with a leak.

《洛斯阿拉莫斯》约瑟夫·卡侬（1997）

曾经，最优秀的间谍小说都是基于他们的读者对当代事件的关注的基础上进行创作和发挥的。然而，在过去的几十年里，历史小说的兴起使得间谍题材领域涌现了大量架空历史的作品。艾伦·福斯特（William Furst），威廉·博伊德（William Boyd）和罗伯特·哈里斯（Robert Harris）的作品都是很好的例子，但无一能与卡侬的创作相媲美。这本书是卡侬的第一部小说，讲述的是1945年的故事。当时，情报官员康纳利被派往现实中并不存在、名为洛斯阿拉莫斯的地方，去那里调查对曼哈顿项目安全人员的谋杀是否只是情杀，还是与泄密有关。

The Company by Robert Littell (2002)

Spanning 45 years in 900 pages, Littell’s behemoth manages to do everything that Norman Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost attempted, but it’s a lot more reader-friendly. The Company tells the story of four CIA spies who encounter everybody from Kim Philby and the Kennedy brothers to Reagan, Putin and eventually a Bin Laden-esque villain in Afghanistan (presciently, as Little wrote it before 9/11). Littell lacks le Carré’s moral ambiguity (one character repudiates that famous “cowboys and Indians” passage), but he is the closest thing to an American equivalent.

《合伙人》 罗伯特·利特尔（2002）

时间跨越45年，篇幅长达900页，利特尔创作的这本大部头设法完成诺曼·梅勒在书中做到的所有事，但前者对读者更为友好。《合伙人》讲述了四名中情局特工的故事。故事中他们遇到了许多人，从金·菲尔比和肯尼迪兄弟到里根和普京，最终成为了阿富汗的一个恶棍（这真是具有预见性，因为利特尔是在9·11事件之前完成这部作品的）。尽管利特尔这本书不具有勒卡雷作品中的道德模糊性（书中有一个角色就拒绝了勒卡雷作品中那段著名的“牛仔和印第安人”言论），但是它无疑是最接近美国人价值观的。

Decoded by Mai Jia (2002)

A literary superstar in China, Mai Jia’s multi-million-selling novels draw on his past in the Chinese security services. Decoded is the tale of an autistic genius who becomes a brilliant codebreaker. Readers expecting constant thrills and spills or Imitation Game-style sentimentalisation of a troubled savant’s life will be disappointed. Decoded is riddling, dreamlike and digressive, in the manner of classical Chinese fiction, but you end up wanting to decipher its mysteries as fervently as its protagonist tackles his codes.

《解密》（2002） 作者：麦家

作为中国的文学巨星，麦家那些畅销数百万册的小说借鉴了他过往在中国安全部门的经历，而这本《解密》则是一个关于孤僻天才成长为杰出破译家的故事。如果读者们期待从中读到持续不断的刺激和爆发情节，或《模仿游戏》中那种天才学者的困惑和感伤，那将会失望而归。相反，《解密》延续了中国古典小说的叙事传统，它扑朔迷离，如梦似幻，却又枝节繁生，但最终你会迫不及待渴望去破解它的奥秘，就像书中的主角对待他的密码一样。

Fever and Spear by Javier Marías (2002)

Marías, perhaps Spain’s greatest living novelist, began his career as a translator, and most of his novels still centre on translators: “people who are renouncing their own voices”. The same might be said of spies, and the parallels have preoccupied Marías in his great Your Face Tomorrow trilogy. This, the first volume, introduces Deza, a Spanish translator employed by a mysterious offshoot of MI6 that analyses people’s faces and mannerisms for clues about what they might do next. Vicious violence unfolds with mesmerising, Proustian slowness.

《狂热与矛枪》哈维尔·马里亚斯（2002）

马里亚斯也许是最伟大的西班牙当代小说家。他以翻译开始了他的文学生涯，因此他的许多小说也聚焦所谓的翻译者们，即“放弃自己声音的人”，这和间谍的处境如出一辙。两者之间的相似性让马里亚斯神魂颠倒，集中的反映在他伟大的三部曲《你明日的容颜》中。此书是三部曲中的第一部，它介绍了受雇于军情六处机密部门的西班牙语翻译者德扎通过分析人们的面部和行为方式来获知对方接下来的行动。这本书以一种令人入迷、普鲁斯特式的缓慢节奏，徐徐展开邪恶的行径。

Slow Horses by Mick Herron (2010)This is the first volume of what I hope will become a long series set in Slough House, a sort of Siberia-on-Thames to which MI6 workers who have blotted their copybooks – for being alcoholic, sleeping with the wrong person or leaving secret files on the Tube – are exiled to do donkey work. The disgraced spies trade acidulous put-downs – each topped by their monstrous bully of a boss, Jackson Lamb – as they try to redeem their reputations. A useful corrective in the era of television’s superheroic Spooks, Herron’s superb novels suggest that the most important secret spies are hiding is that they’re really just like us.

《慢马》米克·赫伦（2010）

这是“绝望屋”（Slough House）小说系列的首卷，而我个人极为希望此系列发展得足够长。绝望屋是英国版的西伯利亚，它为那些搞砸了的军情六处特工们而设，后者们往往会因为酗酒、淫乱或上传机密文件到YouTube而被惩罚去做苦工。在恶霸上级杰克逊·兰布的统治下，这些臭名昭著的特工们一边试图挽回名誉，一边又在肆无忌惮互相贬低。针对这个推崇战电视剧《军情五处》的超级英雄时代，赫伦的这本优秀小说做出了一次有效的矫正，它告诉我们，间谍们最要的秘密就是他们和我们一样都是常人。

作者介绍：

杰克·克里吉（Jake Kerridge），英国知名评论家，《每日电讯报》记者，犯罪小说资深研究者。