The Great Game

The Great Game: The Myths and Reality of Espionage by Frederick Hitz was book #19. I picked this book up while in Washington DC over the summer at the newly opened International Spy Museum. If you are ever in DC, the Spy Museum is a really fun place to visit. You are guided through the museum as if you are an aspiring agent. You start by memorizing your code name, and then are taught about the tools of the trade as you go throughout the museum "completing your mission." You learn about fun stuff like dead drops, surveillance equipment, and the like. You also learn a lot about the history of spying - the heros and the villains, the rewards and punishments, etc.

The museum actually creeped me out (there's only so many times you can hear about the government spying on its citizens, people betraying confidence, and people being executed and maintain an iron stomach about the whole affair) and I was pretty ready to hit the gift shop after an hour and a half. But it also intrigued me to no end to learn more about spying, spies, and spy related paraphernalia. So, I picked up The Great Game.

Can't say it really lived up to my expectations. The book is a review of spy fiction which the author then compares to real life spies and spy situations. I assume Mr Hitz had a limited amount of real spy material he was allowed to work with when authoring this book (Mr Hitz worked at the CIA through the 90's), which makes the book exceedingly repetitive - thereby completely robbing it of the intended "Wow - truth is stranger than fiction!" effect. If you know nothing about spies and spying, you can learn about both in this book - but the International Spy Museum is a much more enjoyable way to do so.