Analysis of the espionage genre for GMs?

I got a lot out of GURPS Mysteries because of the genre analysis it contains. The author (Lisa J. Steele)

  • explains in what ways mystery fiction is different from real life, and in what ways mystery games in RPG are different from both
  • observes the existence of multiple sub-genres of the mystery genre (e.g.
    • cozy whodunnits,
    • hard-boiled detective stories,
    • police procedural investigations, and
    • thrillers),
  • explains their different structures,
  • and sets out
    • what sort of crime
    • what peculiarities of setting
    • what sort of investigator, in what situation
      each one requires.

I don’t know to what extent that is original analysis by Steele, nor (if any of it reflects an established scholarly analysis) what its sources might be. But it is immensely useful to a GM who might be setting up a campaign or designing an adventure in the mystery genre. I’d like to see corresponding material for other genres.

I would very much like to have a such a treatment of the espionage adventure spy story genre. I can see part of it myself — how internal security investigation stories like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy resemble cozy mysteries, how clandestine operations like those in the Mission Impossible TV series resemble caper (or heist) movies, how counter-intelligence adventures on homes soil resemble procedurals and those on foreign soil resemble hard-boileds, how many spy stories are essentially thrillers. But I haven’t watched enough varied spy-story movies or read enough varied spy-stories to have a complete view, and I haven’t performed or come across performed any particularly applicable analysis.

Is such analysis and instruction available anywhere? Is there a spy-story RPG with such a robust set of advice to GMs? Is there some how-to guide for aspiring writers that covers such breadth? Is there a body of literary criticism that anatomises spy stories in such a useful way?

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I haven’t met it (though I have been arguing for some time that Mission: Impossible (TV) is a caper/heist series with spy-story dressing)

I would start probably by dividing spy stories into ones that try to emulate reality and the ones that come out of Ian Fleming’s idea of reality (and even more extreme, the films). Where are the borders? When does it become a caper story, when does it become a covert ops story? (Usual proviso about genre landmarks applies.)

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There’s a lot of literary criticism about spy novels. (There’s a lot of literary criticism about anything, because literary critics like to hear themselves write.)

One of rubrics used to carve up the genre is the relative importance of character vs action. Almost all good spy stories have both, of course, but the character descriptions and motivations in action oriented stuff tend towards cardboard stereotypes, and the action in character driven works is sometimes almost an afterthought.

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