Spy Novels Come To Life

Spies are in the news again, but they've been in Alan Furst's fiction for over 20 years. His new novel, Spies of the Balkans, is his 11th work of Depression & World War II-era espionage fiction.

The book has been getting great reviews, but Furst tells host & fellow novelist Kurt Anderson he has no idea what he did right —- other than teleporting to another time and place when he begins to type.

Audio Embed: PRI & WNYC's program Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen.

As recent focus moved from the deported Russians to a defecting Iranian, the plot seemed to evoke echoes of David Ignatius, and the novel he issued in 2009... Complex as the country of Iran, itself.

Audio Embed: Morning Edition 5/13/09, Host: Steve Inskeep.

Read an excerpt of
The Increment.

Evidence of espionage hides in plain sight...
All over the short wave radio band.

NPR's Guy Raz takes a listen with Mark Stout, the official historian at the International Spy Museum. Mysterious mechanical voices count off endless strings of numbers — in English, Czech, Russian and German … even Morse code. But who's listening, and why?

Audio Embed: All Things Considered 7/17/10.