5 Spy Novels Author:Howard Haycraft, E. Phillips Oppenheim, John Buchan, Eric Ambler, Martha Albrand, Manning Coles Included are: — The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim. Copyright 1920,1948 — Greenmantle by John Buchan. Copyright 1926 — Epitaph for a Spy by Eric Ambler. Copyright 1952 — No Surrender by Martha Albrand. Copyright 1942 — No Entry by Manning Coles. Copyright 1958 — From intro by Howard Haycraft: — ... "most critics agree the modern spy ... more »novel came of age about the time of World War I. In assembling the present volume, therefore, it has been my aim to choose a quintet of outstanding novels by top authors which, in their respective spans of action, carry the spy story forward chronologically from the premonitory phases to the Kaiser's War up to the last decade.
To open the volume I have picked that still dazzling tour de force, E. Phillips Oppenheim's The Great Impersonation, set in the days just before the 1914-1918 war. To represent the conflict itself, what better choice than John Buchan's adventurous Greenmantle, featuring Richard Hannay & Co., written while the future Lord Tweedmuir was on active duty? To typify, in its understated realism, the uneasy years between the wars my selection is Eric Ambler's too little known Epitaph for a Spy, which will come as a refreshing surprise to most readers. Far more espionage novels were published during (or relating to) World War II than any other period; yet I think few readers or critics will dispute my choice of Martha Albrand's stirring and aptly titled tale of the Resistance in Holland, No Surrender. And finally, to bring the volume to an appropriate close, I have liked Manning Coles' No Entry, in which that old pro Tommy Hambledon, putting on one of his most stylish performces, outwits evil behind the Iron Curtain."« less