STEVE CARROLL WRITES

The following column originally appeared in Justin Marriott's PAPERBACK FANATIC #50 (sadly the final edition of this fine publication), which was published in August of 2025. You can buy a copy of it  HERE . That article has been slightly expanded upon for this blog. Anyone   who knows me or has been following my columns here in Paperback Fanatic knows   that I have a real soft spot for spy thrillers. While I can certainly appreciate the cerebral rewards of   reading some John le  Carré or Graham Greene, my tastes   have always drifted toward the more visceral and action-oriented end of the   fiction spectrum. Cold war in the shadows is fine (and well   represented by my   top pick), but give me a megalomaniac bent on world domination if possible with   a little sci-fi thrown into the mix and I’m in like Flint (pun intended). With   all that said, here is your manly man’s guide to my personal favorite picks for   top 10 best s...

If you’ve followed this blog for any real length of time, then you know by now   that I am an espionage junkie. And nothing gets me going more than the   espionage books, movies and television shows of the Golden Age of spies, the   Cold War 50s, 60s, and 70s. Of course, this explosion in popularity at   that   time was tied directly into the superstardom of a single source—James Bond, Ian   Fleming’s indomitable British spy for Her Majesty, and his exploits   in novels   and the wildly successful film series that started in 1962 (and remains a   cash-cow today). Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham created  Men’s   Adventure Quarterly  (MAQ) as a way to preserve and celebrate the Men’s   Adventure Magazines   (MAM) of a bygone era. That MAM era was a post-war phenomenon   that ran from the late 40s through the early 70s. In their earlier heyday, there   was a   huge emphasis on so-called “true stories” of m...