Putting the Thrill Back in the Spy Thriller

Roughly up until the heyday of John le Carré, the British spy novel tended to follow an approved pattern. A well-educated but bored man, somewhere between youth and middle age, would find himself caught up in an international conspiracy that would involve some, or all, of the following: duplicitous intelligence officers, untrustworthy foreign powers, a very great consumption of expensive food and wine, a MacGuffin that everyone wants to lay their hands on, and, last but not least, a love interest whose loyalties remain ambiguous right up until the final page.