The Dead Drop Files

“ I read the James Bond novel Seafire while on a business trip. This is from 1994, which is late in the John Gardner era — he only wrote one more original Bond novel after this one. It was…okay. I’ve never loved Gardner’s work. Here’s my review . ”

“ The NY Times released The Top 50 Thrillers of the 21st Century . ‘Slow Horses’ is #9. I enjoyed that — here’s my review from a few years back. ”

“ Reading Maps visually plots the geographic travels of various novels. As you can imagine, the James Bond novels are pretty active, in terms of globe-hopping. Here’s the entry for Casino Royale (the movie). ”

“Chief of Station was a bit of a miss. It’s well-filmed, on-location in Budapest, and even has a bit part for a former Bond girl (Olga Kurylenko was Camilla Montes in Quantum of Solace ). It opens with a nice scene of tradecraft, which makes up for a particularly uncomfortable torture scene later on…”

“ Doug DeMuro reviews the Jaguar XKR from Die Another Day , currently on display in the Peterson Muesum. ”

“ Though not technically a ‘spy,’ The Thomas Crown Affair does lurk on the periphery. I loved the Pierce Brosnan version from 1999, and it looks like we’re getting a new one from Michael B. Jordan. ”

“ Supposedly, Radiohead’s ‘Man of War’ was submitted to be a James Bond theme, but since it wasn’t written just for the movie, it wouldn’t have been eligible to win an Oscar, so it was declined. I get it though — it has the right vibe. ”

“British author Jeffrey Archer supplied recommendations for ‘The Best Heist and Con Artist Books’ novels over on Five Books named ‘Goldfinger’ as the best heist novel. I find this interesting because, while the film version is wildly popular, I thought the novel was weaker. (Speaking of Jeffrey…”

“Letterboxd has published its Top 100 Spy Films . It’s a pretty good list. Happy to see two of Daniel Craig’s Bond films quite high (before any Connery film, notably), along with Rogue One (if it included TV, then Andor would no-doubt be up there too). Thunderbolts seems like a really odd choice,…”

“Really enjoyed the rest of this. Good story, never slowed down. It’s very heavy on tradecraft, which I liked. Lots of moral ambiguity in there too. Interestingly, there’s a plot thread all through season one that essentially just sets up what will likely be a bigger thing in season two….”

“This show is in its second season, but I don’t remember seeing it before. I saw ads for it in the Dallas airport, then it was recommended to me by Prime. It’s a slow burn — very random and confusing for the first 30 minutes, but then it starts to clear up. Michael Fassbender is ‘Martian,’ a CIA spy…”

“ This is the third installment of the Emma Makepeace series. It was fun and lightweight, like the first two — here’s my review . I did notice that the author has since written a novel outside that series, which I hope doesn’t mean she’s abandoned it. ”

“I’d never heard of this British sitcom before, but caught a few episodes on a flight. It stars Nick Mohammed (one of the coaches from Ted Lasso ; he’s also the creator) as a hapless, low-level GCHQ employee, and David Schwimmer (Ross from Friends ) as an equally hapless — but arrogant and…”

“Haywire is fully 15 years old, back when Gina Carano was known only for MMA , hadn’t done Star Wars, and hadn’t made the tweets that got her canceled. It’s not a bad movie at all. It’s directed by Steven Soderberg, and it shows. It’s very moody, very stylized. And the soundtrack is by the same guy…”

“Somehow, this YouTube channel has become the URL that auto-populates whenever I start typing ‘youtube’ in the browser bar. It’s clearly AI-generated, but it’s also quite good. It’s exactly what the title promises: jazzy tunes with a classic espionage vibe. I can’t really explain it too well, so…”

“This is not a ‘good’ film, but it’s inventive and amusing. It’s basically a big spy parody, with a pretty decent twist in the middle that I didn’t see coming. But it’s way, way too long, at two-and-a-half hours. Also, it absolutely bombed at the box office. Made less than $100 million when it had…”

“Very ‘paint-by-numbers.’ I enjoy John Krasinski in the role, but there was nothing in this film that was interesting. Even the action sequences were tired. I liked the prior series format, because a plot could develop over eight full hours of story. This is only about 90 minutes, and the plot is…”