Product Description

Former MI6 officer Harry Ferguson gives behind the scenes information including things not shown on screen. He shows how to lie without being caught, how to follow someone without being spotted and how to spot those who might be following you. He reveals the secrets of walk-ins, gangplank approaches, false flag operations, dead letter boxes and brush contacts. There are sections on how to construct an alternative identity, how to check your house for bugging devices and your car for bombs, how to disappear in a crowd by 'going grey'and how agents are spotted and recruited. But Spy also goes beyond the techniques of espionage to examine a range of issues facing today's intelligence services - the morality of using assassination and blackmail, the heroes and villains of the espionage world, and how modern terrorists are able to evade detection by Western intelligence organisations. At the end of it all he even tells you how to apply for a job with the real intelligence services.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24660 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Harry Ferguson is a former MI6 offier, who later worked undercover with Customs and Excise for eight years and is now a full-time writer. His first book, Kilo 17 (Bloomsbury, 2003), told the inside story of a close-knit Customs team during a major drugs investigation. The sequel Lima 3: Taking on the Heroin Traffickers will be published in June 2005.

Customer Reviews

the reality of spying
So many books on espionage concentrate on James Bond style gadgets. This book avoids that and,as well as chapters defining what intelligence is, developing a cover or new identity,and surveillance and countersurveillance, it has excellent information on the core of espionage which is agent recruitment. This book stresses how to build relationships or if you want to be cynical about it,how to manipulate people.
Forget the movies and read this book written by an ex-MI6 officer.

A great place to start
This is clearly designed to be an introduction to the subject for the general public so I suppose specialists will know much of what is in here, but even so it is an excellent read, especially good for dipping into rather than reading cover to cover. It is also a fascinating book because it is the only one about the craft of spying written by a real former MI6 officer. The emphasis of the book (the manipulation of people rather than use of bugs and gadgets) is intriguing. But the big question is: what happened to the TV series which the book was supposed to accompany? It's sounds as though it would have been great, but I never even heard that it was on.

MI6 huh ?
I had read "Kilo17", and was very surprised to find out about this book from Ferguson. Well, really, how much of an expert can he pretend to be, given he has barely spent a year or two with 6 ?
That's what he says in his first book, when he explains how he ended up assigned to HMCE.
Mind you the book content is not uninteresting, but nothing you can't find anywhere else through open sources. Which confirmed my impression of a very relative field "expertise" from the author.