Ridley Scott to Direct QUEEN & COUNTRY?

Every couple of years we Queen & Country fans get another little nugget that maybe Greg Rucka is planning another comics series, or maybe something's happening with the forever stuck in development movie. Last week was time for the latest movie rumors. The Wrap reports that powerhouse director Ridley Scott (Body of Lies, Adam Adamant Lives!) is in talks to direct it for Fox. The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed the story.

For those who don't know, Queen & Country is a multi-media spy series by Greg Rucka, spanning a comic book series (handily collected now in four omnibus editions) and three novels. It's heavily inspired by the incredible Seventies TV series The Sandbaggers, but also distinctive in its own right with a cast of terrific, believable, flawed characters. Foremost among them are SIS field agent Tara Chace and her boss, spymaster Paul Crocker, representing, respectively, the field and desk sides of the story. As with The Sandbaggers, Crocker's bureaucratic and political entanglements back at HQ are equally compelling (if not more so) to Tara's life-and-death struggles in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Georgia, Uzbekistan, and other international hotspots. Queen & Country was one of the main inspirations for me in starting this blog, and the subject of my fourth ever post on the blog's first day of existence nearly twelve years ago, in which I called the series "the best current, ongoing spy saga in any medium." Sadly it hasn't been current for years (the last novel was published in 2011, and only a few more comic issues trickled out after that), but it remains one of the genre's all-time high water marks. And I would love to see Tara and her cohorts on the screen. Yet we've heard enough sporadic updates on that adaptation before over the years that I can't help remain skeptical until the cameras actually start to roll--or at least until the studio sets a start date.

Originally, Leverage creator John Rogers penned the script, and at one point Nicole Kidman was attached to star. Later, Ryan Condal (creator of the TV series Colony) came on board to write a draft. In 2013, Ellen Page was attached to star, hot off of Inception and Juno. A few years ago, Seth Meyers (a vocal fan of Queen & Country, who has also discussed the comic with fellow enthusiast Rachel Maddow when she was a guest) asked her if she was still attached and she said yes, but apparently that's now changed. In 2014 commercial director Craig Viveiros came aboard, but now The Wrap reports that "neither [Page nor Viveiros] is still connected to the project." According to their story, Scott, fresh off of All the Money in the World (a gritty 1970s period piece in which Mark Wahlberg plays a former CIA officer), is in talks to direct and produce. It's unclear from the story who the writer of note is at the moment, but their description makes it seem like his version would be based on Rucka's first Queen & Country novel, A Gentleman's Game. Previous drafts appeared to be based on the first two arcs of the comic book (again, just based on capsule descriptions in trades).

I really hope this comes to pass! Scott has the clout to finally get this movie made (though he is fickle and has abandoned other spy projects in the past, like a feature version of The Prisoner), and to attract a big star to play the plum role of Tara. In a 2007 post I chose my own fantasy cast and picked Kelly Macdonald (Trainspotting, Boardwalk Empire) as my ideal Tara, but she probably doesn't have the star wattage to get the film greenlit, and Scott may wish to cast younger. I think either Emily Blunt (Charlie Wilson's War) or Saorise Ronan (Hanna, Lady Bird) would be great choices. I still see Hugh Laurie (The Night Manager) as the only possible Crocker!

Read my review of the third Queen & Country novel, The Last Run, here.
Order Queen & Country: The Definitive Edition - Volume 1 here.
Order Queen & Country: A Gentleman's Game here.

Double O Section 10th Anniversary: Top 10 Spy Novels of the Past Decade

While I haven't seen all the spy movies to be released around the world over the past ten years, I have certainly seen the majority of them. The same can't be said for spy novels. There are simply too many published every year to possibly keep up with all of them. But I do read a whole lot of spy fiction, and try to stay on top of the new stuff. Here are ten of my favorite spy novels published during the past ten years.

My Favorite Spy Novels 2006-2016

1. The Nearest Exit by Olen Steinhauer (2010)

If you haven't read this book, it's a bit unfair of me to list it as the best spy novel of the decade, because it can't really be read as a one-off; it actually requires you to read three books. The good news is... all three are fantastic! The Nearest Exit is the middle novel in Steinhauer's Milo Weaver trilogy, which begins with The Tourist (2009) and ends (for now, anyway) with An American Spy (2012). It's tough to pick a favorite of those (especially between the last two), but when it came out The Nearest Exit blew me away with the best "knot," to use Connie Sachs' term, since Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The characters are compelling; the tradecraft is impressive, and the espionage plot is ingenious. Publishers absolutely love to label any new spy novel with a variation on "le Carré meets Ludlum" (odd as those particular bedfellows are), but Steinhauer really delivers on that, combining exciting action of the latter with the rich characterizations, complex plots and moral uncertainty of the former. It astounds me that these books have not yet been filmed. Perhaps if Steinhauer's new TV show Berlin Station proves successful, that will be remedied.

2. A Most Wanted Man by John le le Carré (2008)

Speaking of le Carré, the all-time master of this genre is still as sharp as ever in his eighties. Not only has he remained prolific (I don't begrudge his contemporary Len Deighton enjoying his retirement, but oh how I wish he were still publishing as well!), but he's remained topical. Le Carré may have written about the Cold War better than just about anyone else, but that period was hardly the limit of his outrage. If anything, he's gotten angrier as he's gotten older. Some of his later books might suffer a bit from getting overly polemical, but A Most Wanted Man is the perfect concoction of literary fury. It's not only the best novel of the "War on Terror," but easily among the best in the author's justly celebrated oeuvre, featuring some of the most memorable characters he ever created. How many authors are still producing some of their best work in their eighth or even ninth decades? Le Carré is a towering talent still at the top of his game. His follow-up novel, Our Kind of Traitor, was also fantastic, as was his memoir this year, The Pigeon Tunnel. I can't wait to see what he does next.

3. Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews (2013)

Proving once again that spies and authors draw from similar skill sets, former CIA officer Jason Matthews penned as impressive a debut novel as you're ever likely to read in this compelling tale of the spy games very much still being played between America and Russia. The novel follows Russian SVR agent Dominiki Egorova and up and coming CIA officer Nate Nash first separately, and then as their paths ultimately converge. While most of us will never be able to judge a spy novel for its accuracy, Matthews certainly lends an air of authority in his descriptions of tradecraft and Agency politics that feel incredibly realistic. Red Sparrow was the first in a trilogy, and unfortunately the second novel, Palace of Treason, was a serious letdown, but I'm holding out hope that Matthews will bounce back with his third novel and cement himself a spot among the great spies-turned-writers like le Carré, Greene and Fleming.

4. The Devil in Amber by Mark Gatiss (2006)

Before Mark Gatiss shot to Internet superstardom as co-creator of the BBC's terrific Sherlock, he penned a trilogy of fantastically fun spy/adventure novels featuring the unlikely secret agent "by appointment to His Majesty" Lucifer Box. Box is a sort of debonair, bisexual mash-up of Sherock Holmes, James Bond and Oscar Wilde, and as witty a narrator as you could ask for. In my review here when this second book in the Box trilogy came out, I wrote that it gave me "just about the most pure enjoyment I’ve gotten out of any book in a long time." All these years later, it still stands out for that. Granted, I must admit that that might have something to do with my specific tastes, which seem to be nearly identical to Gattiss's. Into this supernatural John Buchan/Dennis Wheatley pastiche,/parody, he mixes healthy doses of James Bond, Hammer horror, Adam Adamant, Doctor Who and P.G. Wodehouse. For me, that adds up to sheer joy. Anyone who enjoys Gatiss's work on Sherlock and Doctor Who should definitely seek out The Devil in Amber (as well as its precursor, The Vesuvius Club). Read my full review here.

5. The Last Run by Greg Rucka (2011)

For his work on the sublime spy series Queen & Country (comprised of both comics and novels), Greg Rucka made that very first list that started this blog ten years ago, so it's not surprising that he's making this one too. What is a bit surprising (and disappointing), is that he hasn't written more spy novels since then! But the one new Queen & Country novel to come out in the past decade was more than worth the five year wait that led up to it. This is by far my favorite of the subgenre of contemporary espionage that Lee Child memorably and humorously dubbed, "something about Iran." Rucka uses Iran to tell a very contemporary twist on the classic Cold War spy novel. His field heroine, Tara Chace, finds herself on the run deep in enemy territory (quite a Quiller predicament), while his desk hero, Paul Crocker, is faced with that age-old dilemma of trying to figure out whether a potential defector is too good to be true. You don't have to have read any other entries in this superb, Sandbaggers-inspired spy series to enjoy The Last Run, but if you have, it rewards on multiple levels. I really, really hope that Rucka returns to the Queen & Country universe again, be it in a new novel or a new comic series. In fact, that's one of my dearest spy fan-related hopes. Read my full review of The Last Run here.

6. A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming (2012)

Along with Olen Steinhauer, Charles Cumming is probably my favorite contemporary spy writer. He reliably delivers a great read every time, but A Foreign Country, the first of his novels featuring British agent Thomas Kell, is my favorite of his to date. Though the stakes (involving the first female head of MI6) are incredibly high, the story itself is relatively small for contemporary spy ficiton, and I found that appealing. It's also a great example of one of my favorite type of spy plots, the secret war between friendly nations. In this case, that secret war turns deadly. Like Jason Matthews, Cumming is a master at describing tradecraft with a palpable sense of realism, and a lengthy shadowing operation with a very limited surveillance team is the highlight of this novel. This was optioned by Colin Firth's company back in 2013 as a potential starring vehicle for the actor (who I think would be great as Kell). Earlier this year it was reported that the project is still alive, but might take the form of a miniseries rather than a movie. That's something I would love to see!

7. The Moneypenny Diaries: Secret Servant by Kate Westbrook (2006)

When The Moneypenny Diaries concept was first announced, it sounded like a terrible idea. It seemed like a blatant attempt by Ian Fleming Publications to capitalize on the then zeitgeisty success of Bridget Jones' Diary... which seemed like an odd zeitgeist to capitalize on for the heirs of Ian Fleming. So who would have predicted such an odd experiment would produce the best James Bond continuation novel of the last decade? Unfortunately, it was so under the radar that hardly anyone outside of hardcore Bond fans ever found out about it. But the second book, in particular, in Samantha Weinberg's really quite brilliant trilogy definitely deserves a larger audience. Weinberg, writing as Kate Westbrook, actually wrote a Bond novel with the potential to appeal to the sorts of spy fans who don't normally give 007 the time of day. She penned a Bond novel, with Miss Moneypenny as the protagonist, set in John le Carré's world—mixed with actual history. In Secret Servant, we see Bond's Service torn apart by a mole and M acting like Control in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Add to that real-life traitor Kim Philby and his wife Eleanor, and you've got the makings of a Bond novel unlike any other and a treat for Bond fans and fans of the "desk" half of the spy genre alike. Read my full review of The Moneypenny Diaries: Secret Servant here, and my interview with Weinberg here.

8. Double or Die by Charlie Higson (2007)

The Moneypenny Diaries wasn't the only seemingly bad idea by Ian Fleming Publications to strike unlikely gold in the past decade. The announcement that they would explore the adventures of James Bond as a boy in a series of Young Adult books seemed like an equally blatant Harry Potter (and Alex Rider)-inspired cash-grab, and initially provoked consternation among many fans. But author Charlie Higson improbably made this unlikely premise work, and ended up penning some of the very best James Bond continuation novels to date, as well as some of the best of the very rich trend of Young Adult literature in the early 2000s. It's a toss-up for me whether Blood Fever (which pre-dated this blog) or Double or Die is my favorite, but there is no question that the latter is a fantastic read. In attempting to decrypt a secret code, James and his Eton friends find themselves on a scavanger hunt across pre-WWII London involving gambling, Soviet spies and a nascent Bletchley Park. It's a great Young Adult adventure that feels authentically Bondian, and a fantastic read. Read my full review of Double or Die here.

9. Restless by William Boyd (2006)

William Boyd eventually became a James Bond continuation novelist himself, and penned a decent 007 entry with Solo. But it wasn't nearly as good as his original spy novel Restless, a literary thriller about a young woman in 1970s Britain searching for the elusive truth about her mother's past as an agent of William Stephenson's British Security Coordination during WWII. The BSC makes a fascinating backdrop for a spy novel, dealing again with that theme of spying between friendly nations. In this case, that spying includes the real-life historical efforts of Stephenson's organization to draw America into the war to aid Britain. But both the 1940s and 1970s storylines are compelling (unlike in the miniseries, which gave short shrift to the Seventies one), and Boyd creates two terrific heroines. It should be noted that there's an excellent audio version read by Bond Girl and Oscar nominee Rosamund Pike. Boyd's masterpiece is Any Human Heart (a novel that features a little bit of spying—and Ian Fleming as a character—but which isn't really a spy novel), but Restless is also well worth reading.

10. Dead Line by Stella Rimington (2008)

Stella Rimington is another former spook turned successful author, and like Jason Matthews, she lends credence to the theory that the two professions rely on some of the same skill sets. Like Matthews, the former Director General of MI5 brings an air of undeniable authenticity to her Liz Carlyle spy novels. Dead Line is among Rimington's best, and expands the tapestry a bit from her previous books. Rather than focusing on Carlyle and her antagonist, she follows many different agents working for different countries and different branches of the British intelligence community this time around. While it isn't immediately clear how all of these storylines are related, the converge in a most satisfying manner, culminating in an assassination attempt at a peace conference in Scotland. Rimington also proved prescient (again, not surprising given her former profession) in predicting the significance of Aleppo in world affairs. Read my full review of Dead Line here.

Those were ten of my favorite spy novels of the past decade, though I could easily make a list of fifty! (Well, maybe not easily. These things take time to write!) What were some of yours? I'd love to get some recommendations for my reading pile.

Addendum: I cannot believe that I forgot to include Jeremy Duns' excellent debut novel, Free Agent! It was easily among my favorites of that period, but for some reason I had thought it came out sooner.

The contest code word is: AMBER.

Tradecraft: Ellen Page in Talks to Star in Queen & Country Movie!

UNCLE who? While spy fans have been focused on other (admittedly exciting) topics for the past week, Fox has apparently been slowly moving forward once again on a spy project so exciting that it eclipses nearly all others in my own mind: the long-gestating Queen & Country movie, based on Greg Rucka's excellent, excellent series of comic books and novels! We haven't heard any movement on Queen & Country since 2009, when Peter Chernin came on board as a producer. That's a long time to remain dormant, and I'd feared the worst. But today, The Hollywood Reporter reports new movement... major movement! According to the trade, Ellen Page (Inception, Juno) is in negotiations to star as British secret agent Tara Chace. Peter Chernin (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) is still producing, along with Jenno Topping (I Spy, Charlie's Angels). The script of note is by Ryan Condal (Hercules: The Thracian Wars), who joined the project back in 2009 following previous drafts by Rucka, John Moore and Leverage creator Jon Rogers. I'd say it's a good sign that his script is deemed solid enough to last this long in the development process. According to the trade's log line, the film version of Queen & Country "tells of a British SOS [sic] operative named Tara Chace whose identity is compromised after she carries out an assassination." (Tara is actually a "minder" for the SIS, better known as MI6. Minders are roughly the equivalent in Rucka's world of le Carré's scalphunters, Fleming's Double O's, or, most directly, The Sandbaggers' sandbaggers. They're the special section.) This is basically the same log line that we've been hearing for years on this project, and still leads me to believe that the script is culled primarily from the first two arcs of Rucka's comic book, both of which are collected in Queen & Country: The Definitive Edition, Vol. 1 (an absolutely essential read for serious-minded spy fans!).

I unabashedly love Queen & Country. In my third ever post on this blog, way back in 2006, I called it "the best current, ongoing spy saga in any medium." Seven years later, I totally stand by that... except for that fact that with no new entry since 2011's novel The Last Run, I'm not completely sure it can still be called "ongoing." But even in the age of wonderful spy television like Homeland and The Americans and a renaissance for the James Bond moives, I still stand by Q&C as the best in any medium! It's simply great stuff, combining the Desk and Field sides of the serious side of the spy genre as well as past masters like Len Deighton's Samson series or Queen & Country's primary acknolwedged inspiration, Ian Mackintosh's Seventies TV classic The Sandbaggers. The entire run (to date) of the fantastic Oni Press comic book is collected in four oversized "definitive editions." These, along with the novels A Gentleman's Game, Private Wars and The Last Run comprise the entirety of the Tara Chace saga, again to date. In 2007 I came up with my own dream cast for a Queen & Country movie here. Ellen Page was not on my radar at the time, but I think she's an excellent actress and provided she can manage a convincing British accent (I'm guessing she can), she should prove a terrific choice! My other choices are probably a bit too old now to play opposite Page, but I stand by my selection of Hugh Laurie for the crucial role of section head Paul Crocker nonetheless! (Peter Capaldi would also be excellent, if a bit on the nose, but of course he's not tied up for the forseeable future with Doctor Who.) It will be interesting to see who ends up filling those roles, but I hope that Laurie (who made Fox a fortune during his years on House) is on their shortlist.

I really hope that Page signs on, and that her casting paves the way for this movie actually getting made! (And then I hope that inspires Rucka to revive the comic book, as he's been promising to do for many years now.) This is definitely one to keep an eye on. A series of Queen & Country movies could be the best thing to happen in the spy genre since Tinker Tailor!

Book Review: The Last Run: A Queen and Country Novel by Greg Rucka

With his third novel in a franchise that also comprises an ongoing series of comic books and several mini-series (all conveniently collected into four omnibus-sized volumes), Greg Rucka happily maintains the high standards that Queen and Country fans have become accustomed to and then some. I would have been happy just to have these characters back after too long an absence from both bookstores and comic book stores, and might have settled for something less—but fortunately I didn’t have to. The Last Run is a fantastic spy novel, and probably the second-best in the saga so far, closely following A Gentleman’s Game. (And the second book, Private Wars, was no slouch either.) A familiarity with the previous novels or comics is not necessary to enjoy this book, as Rucka concisely reintroduces all of the major characters quite effectively—which is handy even for a longtime fan, since it’s been so long since we’ve enjoyed the company of Tara Chace, Paul Crocker and the rest of Rucka’s SIS crew. (However, if you have read the rest of the series, you’ll be rewarded with some rich payoffs to character arcs and political machinations that have been percolating for its duration.)

Tara Chace is Minder One, the head of the SIS’s Special Section. (Rucka’s minders are roughly the equivalent of Le Carré’s scalp hunters, Fleming’s Double O’s or—most directly—The Sandbaggers’ sandbaggers.) But her operational shelf life is fast nearing expiration. Aging roughly in real time since the beginning of the series, she’s been at it for over a decade, which is far longer than most agents are kept in the field in Rucka’s world. (And very probably in real life, I’d imagine.) Furthermore, she’s a mother now, and she doesn’t like leaving her daughter Tamsin for long periods of time—with no certainty of ever returning. Particularly poignantly, she’s forced to leave Tamsin in the arms of a babysitter while the child has the flu and is running a high fever as Tara embarks on her final mission. And it’s never in any doubt that this is, indeed, her final mission—one way or another. That doesn’t give anything away; Rucka makes that clear from the earliest chapters if not the title itself. Tara Chace submits her resignation to Paul Crocker, the Director of Operations (D-Ops), but considerately agrees to stay on until a suitable replacement can be found. She soon comes to regret that consideration, however, when the head of the service, C, insists (at the unappreciated behest of the CIA) that Minder One take on a potentially suicidal mission into Iran that seems suspiciously like a trap.

In all of his novels, Rucka divides his chapters between Tara’s point of view, Crocker’s, that of a supposed ally and that of a supposed enemy. (Forgive my vagueness, but to reveal who is actually what in books like these would be, in the words of The Prisoner’s Number 2, telling. Perhaps the characters are exactly as they appear, and perhaps they are not. Readers of Rucka’s past Q&C novels know it can go either way.) In The Last Run, the new characters are SIS’s newly-posted Tehran Station Number Two, Caleb Lewis, and Youness Shirazi, the head of Iran’s secret police, VEVAK, who spends much of the story pursuing our heroine. In every Rucka novel I begin by sighing when I come to a chapter focusing on one of these non-regulars and thumb ahead to see how many pages I’ll have to go until I get back to my favorite characters, and then very quickly I come to welcome the new characters just as much. In the comics, Rucka is limited by the space constrictions of the medium and can’t afford to spend so much time developing his antagonists. Those stories work wonderfully sticking to the POVs of Tara and Crocker, but the addition of other points of view differentiate the novels enough to make them a unique reading experience in the series—and to justify using two different mediums to tell his stories.

The too-good-to-be-true bait that Crocker reluctantly sends Tara after is a high-level would-be defector: no less a personage than the nephew of the Ayatollah himself. The Iran setting provides not only a backdrop torn directly from the headlines (as they say), but also the best opportunity to tell a Cold War-style spy story in the vein of Smiley and Samson in a modern context. In his (quite brilliant) short story “Section 7 (a) (Operational),” Lee Child pokes fun at the ubiquity of Iran-related plots in contemporary spy novels. But in The Last Run, Greg Rucka ably demonstrates all the advantages of setting a spy story in that country. It’s the closest scenario in today’s world to the European chessboard Len Deighton and John Le Carré once moved their pieces around. When the mission predictably goes to hell, Tara finds herself alone in a hostile country being pursued by VEVAK, the military and the regular police. Yet it’s a country she was able to travel freely into under non-diplomatic cover—and even blend in. How many other countries in the news today could a blond, female, Western spy believably do that in? Rucka handily puts a contemporary spin on all of my favorite Cold War tropes: the ambiguity of a defector (is he for real or not?), the embassy as refuge, imperiled networks and dead drops, the agent on her own behind enemy lines, the run for the border and ingenious crossings thereof. The Last Run has all that in spades.

As usual, poor Tara is put through the ringer. More than ever before, though, there is absolutely no certainty that she will come through it all. We know from the start that it’s her last run, but that can mean several things… and Rucka has shown time and again that he’s not above killing off main characters in this series. Meanwhile, as usual, Paul Crocker has his own battles to fight at home, and his navigation of the Whitehall bureaucracy is often as perilous in its own way as Tara’s flight from authorities in an unfriendly land. Paul Crocker is Rucka’s greatest creation, and I could easily read a whole novel (or comic) just about him… but it’s probably more fun to jump between the field and the office, as we do in Queen and Country.

If The Last Run has a flaw, it’s that the ending—whatever happens—is all too abrupt. While all the primary plot threads are resolved, I’d like to have known more about how some of them were wrapped up. But thanks to the point of view we see them through, that’s not possible. I closed the book with questions—not the sort that fuel my already eager anticipation for the next book or comic, but the sort that pertain specifically to the one I just finished and are unlikely to be addressed in the future. But that’s a minor complaint. The Last Run is a clearly well-researched and utterly thrilling read sure to satisfy fans of both the Desk and Field sides of the spy genre. I honestly can’t recommend this whole series highly enough.

Tradecraft: Queens And Ghosts

Variety reports that former Fox executive turned producer Peter Chernin has come aboard as a producer on Queen & Country, the film based on Greg Rucka's stellar series of comic books and novels. Other than that, the story doesn't tell us anything about the project that we didn't already know. , but I like to report any time that Queen & Country is mentioned in the trades as this is a project I'm really, really rooting for. It's one of my very favorite spy series ever, in any media, so I want to see the film done right! The trade reiterates the same logline the used last time, reinforcing my belief that the current screenplay appears to be based on a combination of the first comic book arc and the first novel. According to the story, Chernin will also produce a new Travis McGee based on the first book in John D. MacDonald's classic detective series, The Deep Blue Goodbye. Leonardo DiCaprio will star and co-produce. Hm. It will be cool to see Travis McGee revived on the bigscreen, and while DiCaprio seems a somewhat odd choice, I think I can see it... maybe. (Apparently, Bish feels differently!)

Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter reports that Pierce Brosnan's next spy movie, The Ghost, has been delayed by the arrest of director Roman Polanski in Switzerland. According to the trade, "Polanski's agent, ICM chief Jeff Berg, said Polanski had completed much of the editing on The Ghost. But other postproduction work, including music scoring and sound mixing, had yet to be done, Berg said." The film does not yet have a US distributor, which Polanski usually lines up after he finishes. Robert Harris, author of the novel upon which the movie is based, reiterates why he thinks Polanski is the perfect director for the material: "There's a lot of psychological intrigue in the story, as well as espionage and politics, and most of the action takes place in an oceanfront house during the middle of winter -- all of it classic Polanski territory." Brosnan stars alongside Ewan McGregor, Tom Wilkinson, Olivia Williams and Kim Cattrall.

Tradecraft: New Writer Boards Queen & Country Movie
New Rucka Novel On The Way As Well

I somehow missed this bit a few weeks ago, but according to The Hollywood Reporter, the Queen & Country movie is still on track! That's great news! Not having heard anything about it for a few years (when Leverage's John Rogers was penning the screenplay), I had assumed that the film adaptation of my favorite spy series was dead in the water. But the trade reports that the movie version of Greg Rucka's comics and novels starring British agent Tara Chace is set up at Fox, and that Ryan Condal, who wrote last year's Black List script Galahad, is penning a new draft. "The project," they helpfully remind those who haven't read Rucka's work, "centers on a female Special Ops agent who is on the run after carrying out a high-level assassination in Eastern Europe. Those familiar with the project have described it as a female version of The Bourne Identity. [Behind Enemy Lines director] John Moore had penned a draft of Country, which Jenno Topping is producing and Peter Kang is overseeing for Fox." Hm, from that description I'd hazard that they're combining the first arc of the comic series with the first novel, A Gentleman's Game, which really isn't a bad idea. But while A Gentleman's Game in particular offers a lot of action, Queen & Country really isn't Bourne. I hope that's just studio shorthand, and that Fox isn't actually turning the best modern example of the more "realistic" school of spy fiction into a Bourne clone! Rucka's stories owe far, far more to The Sandbaggers than to Robert Ludlum.

All this is particularly topical because Whiteout, a film based on another Rucka comic book (the very one that introduced readers to Tara Chace, in fact, under the guise of Lilly Sharpe) opens in U.S. cinemas tonight–unfortunately to less than stellar reviews. I've been excited for the Whiteout movie since it was first announced (and reported here) more than two years ago, so I definitely plan on seeing it and formulating my own opinion. But the reviews are a bit discouraging. I would really hate to see Rucka's brilliant Queen & Country, which I've previously called the best ongoing spy saga in any medium, turned into a less than brilliant film. So here's hoping that Fox and Condal have a good grip on the material!

The Reporter mentions that Nicole Kidman was at one point attached to the project, which "is seen as a vehicle for a strong female lead." Judging from the tense used, she's no longer attached. A couple of years ago, I picked my dream cast for a Queen & Country movie... and I stand by my choices today. (Click here to see them.) While Kate Winslet would be good (as a commenter pointed out on that post), I still think that Kelly Macdonald is the best woman for the job–and her star has risen considerably since then!

Even if a potential Queen & Country movie is still a long way off, Mister 8's Armstrong Sabian alerted me that Rucka has officially confirmed on his blog that he's hard at work on a new Tara Chace novel! So there's that to look forward to, for sure. Still missing in action is a third Whiteout graphic novel announced in 2007 and now nearly two years overdue, but that sort of schedule is par for the course with Rucka and publisher Oni Press. The good news is, it's always worth the wait!

New Spy Comics Out This Week: Queen & Country

Greg Rucka's Queen & Country: Definitive Edition: Volume 4 trade paperback (from Oni Press) finally showed up on the shelves of comic book stores today! (It will still take a few more weeks to hit regular bookstores and Amazon.) This volume wraps up collecting all extant Queen & Country comics; now we've got to wait patiently for Rucka to write some long-promised new ones to fill another volume! Volume 4 includes the three "Delcassified" mini-series, each of which tells the story of an early mission of one of the Q&C supporting players. The fantastic first story follows Tara Chace's hard-nosed boss Director of Operations Paul Crocker (back when he was still a field agent) on a classic, Le Carré-esque bit of late-Cold War wall-crossing intrigue. The second story follows Tom Wallace on a mission to Hong Kong on the eve of its changeover in 1997. The final one, following gay agent Nicholas Poole back when he was still with the SAS in Northern Ireland, finds Alex Rider graphic novelist Antony Johnston ably filling in for Rucka on writing duties. The volume is backed up with ample bonus material, including the usual assortment of sketches as well as lengthy interviews between Rucka and the various artists. All four volumes of this series are absolutely essential in any library of serious spy literature!

Click here to read my overview of Queen & Country

Click here to read my dream cast for a Queen & Country movie

Click here to read the latest news on the future of Queen & Country

COMIC-CON: Queen & Country Update

[CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS]

At the Oni Press booth in San Diego, writer Greg Rucka filled me in on what the future holds for his fantastic spy series, Queen & Country. It's been a while since we've seen Tara Chace in comics, and even longer since the last novel, Private Wars. So what's next? Sadly, more waiting... for now. Rucka says the comic book series will return in 2010 from Oni Press. As he's said before, he wants to give Tara's daughter, Tamsin, a chance to grow up enough to be a character instead of a distraction. When we do see Tara again, a lot will have changed in her world. She'll have taken over Paul Crocker's job as D-Ops (Director of Operations) at SIS, and there will be a new female Minder 3 who finds herself with the worst boss in the world, Rucka says, because Tara did already did everything she has to do first, and did it backwards and in high heels. I like that dynamic. What I didn't ask him, unfortunately, was where that will leave Crocker! Presumably he'll become C, because he has to still be part of the series. I sure hope so! I've come to enjoy the Crocker segments even more than the Chace ones. It will be interesting, however, to see poor Tara try to navigate those rough political waters Crocker had to as D-Ops. She doesn't seem very well equipped for the bureaucratic side of the spy business.

Rucka has no plans for another Q&C novel right now, largely because they take so long to research. His next novel will instead once more feature his regular hero, Atticus Kodiac. There's no movement happening on the Q&C movie right now, as far as Rucka knows, but he remains hopeful for the future...

In the meantime, Rucka has another comic debuting this winter, a private eye series called Stumptown. There were previews available at Comic-Con, and it looks–as expected–great. There's another strong, yet seriously flawed, female protagonist in a traditionally male profession–Rucka's specialty. He says his primary influence was The Rockford Files. True, it's not Queen & Country, but nonetheless I'm thrilled to see Rucka doing independent comics again! Stumptown looks to be another treat.

In lieu of new Tara Chace comics, Queen & Country fans can look forward to the third volume in Oni's essential "Definitive Queen & Country" series of trade paperback reprints due out next week. For any spy fans who've never heard of Q&C, Volume 1 of that series is the place to start.

BLOGIVERSARY: The List Revisited
Revisiting a list made one year ago as the inaugural post on this blog.

3. Greg Rucka

A year ago I was excited because issue 31 of Rucka’s phenomenal spy comic book Queen & Country (which at the time I called "the best current, ongoing spy saga in any medium") had just come out after a long delay. I’m sorry to report that since then, only one additional issue has materialized, part three of a four part storyline. That story, "Operation Red Panda," is set to be collected this month, so hopefully that means that the final issue, #33, will be on shelves before that time. As much as I love the series, I’ve actually given up on reading the individual issues because so much time goes by between them that I forget the whole plot up until that point. (They’re often pretty complex plots, too.) So I am looking forward to reading "Operation Red Panda" in its entirety this winter, but sadly don’t foresee any additional Q&C stories for quite some time. Rucka has given some fairly credible reasons for wanting to hold off before the next arc, but the fan in me really can’t wait. Hopefully we’ll at least see Queen & Country heroine Tara Chace in another novel before the next comic appears! In the meantime, Rucka’s slate is pretty full. In addition to writing scads of comics for DC (including the espionage-themed CheckMate which simply requires too much knowledge of the DC universe for me to follow, as much as I’d like to), he’s got another series on tap for Q&C publisher Oni Press called Stumptown. Although he describes it as taking place in the same world as Queen & Country (which is intriguing), he’s switching genres (and continents) on us. Stumptown is an American private detective series which the author describes as being "about as realistic as most private eye stories are going to be, which is to say not at all. Because, frankly, actual investigation work is pretty tedious and undramatic." Just as he’s frequently admitted to (very successfully) modeling Queen & Country on the sublime spy TV series Sandbaggers, Rucka cites The Rockford Files and one of my all-time favorites, Magnum PI, as being the primary influences on Stumptown. I’m sure it will be a great comic book and I look forward to it, but all the while I’ll be yearning for Q&C.

One thing that won't fill that void is the movie of Rucka's graphic novel Whiteout, due in theaters next year. Tara Chace (or Lilly Sharpe as she was known back then) has been cut out of the film version, replaced by a male character. Rucka assured audiences at last summer's San Diego Comic-Con that the movie would still retain an espionage element (personified by this new, male character), and argued that the change better served the plot by making main character Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) the only woman in the all-male world of Antarctica.

Luckily, Oni isn’t leaving Tara Chace out in the cold. They’re replacing the old trade paperback collections with new, longer compendiums of three or four stories per single, affordable volume, as opposed to just one. These new "Definitive Editions" will be a great opportunity for spy fans who haven’t yet done so to discover the amazing world of Queen & Country!

Casting QUEEN & COUNTRY

Casting Queen & Country

This isn’t a news item; it’s just me fantasizing. Sometimes it’s fun to think about who should star in the movie version of your favorite books or comics, should they ever be filmed. A film version of Greg Rucka’s top-notch spy series Queen & Country (comprising both comics and novels) has been long in development (John Rogers was adapting as of several years ago; I have no idea if his script is still the one of note), and here’s who I would cast, were I making it...

Paul Crocker - Hugh Laurie. Definitely Hugh Laurie. Not only is he tall and skinny like his comic book counterpart (and more angular with age), but he’s demonstrated the perfect disposition for the role on House. He’s already played a spymaster on MI-5 (Spooks in Britain), but Crocker’s both more serious and, ultimately, more compassionate than Jules Siviter.

Tom Wallace - Clive Owen. He looks the part, he’s the right age, and I’d still like to see him play a British spy. He’d probably be better suited to the gritty, realistic world of Queen & Country than to James Bond anyway.

Tara Chace - Well, Tara’s the hardest to cast, isn’t she? Cate Blanchett could certainly do a good job if they went with the slightly older Tara of the most recent novel and the upcoming second volume of comics, but Tara should probably be a bit younger. I’ve always thought that Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald (of Trainspotting and The Girl In the Café, whose spy cred includes an episode of Alias), really looks the part, and she’s a good actress, if not very well known. She’d need some blonde dye, of course, but that’s certainly doable. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a big star who’s more suited to the part than her, and maybe Owen and the suddenly, finally big-in-America Laurie would be big enough names to cast a relative unknown in the lead...

And as long as I’m playing the part of producer on this movie, I’ll go ahead and say what I’d adapt, too. I’d either start off with a script based on the first two arcs of the comic book, Broken Ground and Operation: Morningstar, or else shoot the first novel, A Gentleman’s Game. If all this is Greek to you and you have no idea who Tara Chace is, that’s probably the place to start!

More Whiteout This Fall

A few weeks ago, on Free Comic Book Day, Oni Press put out a free reprint of Whiteout #1 by Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber. At the end, Oni Editor-in-Chief James Lucas Jones explained that the freebie was to promote a new, re-mastered Whiteout trade paperback collection. "We’ve gone back to all the original artwork from the book and given it some extra loving," he wrote. "We’ve upgraded the paperstock to one that’s as white as the snow raining down on Carrie. And we’ve added a new afterword to boot!" He goes on to announce that there will also be a new definitive edition of the sequel, Whiteout: Melt and, most excitingly, an all-new miniseries this fall, Whiteout: Thaw. He doesn’t actually state that the third story will be written by Rucka and drawn by Lieber (whose unique, retro artwork is as integral to the comic as Rucka’s sharp writing), but I can’t imagine they’d do one without those two key creative forces.

While the heroine of Whiteout, Carrie Stetko, is a U.S. Marshall, and not a spy, so far both Whiteout stories have included a good deal of espionage. (Carrie joined forces with a British agent in the first one, and a Russian one in the second.) I think it’s safe to expect the same from the third, and if not, the character and the setting are more than enough to make a worthwhile read. Stetko is the lone American law enforcement officer stationed in Antarctica, and the crimes she investigates tend not only to put her in serious personal peril (wait till you see what the title actually refers to!), but to spark international intrigue amongst the various nations with bases on that icy continent.

The first Whiteout miniseries also introduced a tall, blond MI-6 officer named Lily Sharpe who is to Queen & Country’s Tara Chace at least what John Drake is to Number Six, and probably more. Queen & Country was initially announced as a spinoff from Whiteout, but Sharpe’s name was changed to Chace, presumably to create enough deniability that the character wouldn’t be tied up in the Whiteout movie rights, and could be optioned separately. As it stands, the Sharpe character appears to have been completely cut from the Whiteout movie anyway, or possibly turned into a male character. Whiteout is currently filming in Canada starring Kate Beckinsale.

Greg Rucka On The Future Of Queen & Country

Greg Rucka recently did a great interview for the Word Balloons comics podcast and discussed, among many other topics, the future of his sublime but frustratingly-MIA-of-late spy series Queen & Country. And it's mostly bad news, I'm afraid.

On the plus side, he says the final issue of the current arc of the comic series, "Operation: Red Panda," should be out "hopefully in next three months or so" (Publisher Oni's website says June 15... so, fingers crossed!) On the minus, he goes on to reveal that "we're probably going to put the book on hiatus between Volume 1 and Volume 2 for I would think no less than 18 months, possibly in the neighborhood of three years." So there you have it, Queen & Country fans. Prepare to wait three years before the next comic book storyline! (Hopefully there will at least be another novel in the meantime... more on that later.)

Of course, Q&C fans are used to waiting (it's been nearly six months since the last issue of "Red Panda"!), so maybe the hiatus won't be much different from the ongoing series in the last few years. The word "hiatus" just sounds so final that it makes me cringe. Rucka is apologetic ("I am not proud of [the delay]. And I think that if there's fans out there who are pissed off, I can't blame them, because it's not a fair way to treat the audience.... I've made them wait a really long time."), but he does offer some good excuses. Part of the reason for the delay is that Nicola Scott, the artist attached to the beginning of Vol. 2, is currently occupied on DC's Birds of Prey.

Another reason is intrinsic in the story he’s telling. Since the missions in Q&C are tied into real world events, he’s not free to just jump ahead several years at will—and that’s exactly what he’d like to do. At the moment heroine Tara Chace’s daughter, Tamsin, is still a baby, which Rucka feels makes her more of a prop than a character. He feels that waiting a few years will give Tamsin a chance to grow into a more interesting age.

In the meantime, we can expect a new ongoing comic book from Rucka and Oni to be announced at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con (“a different genre, but related”) and another Queen & Country novel… eventually. Rucka says he’s not ready to write that one yet because it requires a lot of research… and travel. That means it won’t be his next book, but it will probably still happen before we see more issues of the comic. Rucka doesn’t address the Tara Chace: Declassified mini-series that was announced a few years ago but never materialized.

He does talk at length about writing the Q&C novels and how that’s different from writing the comic, and about the TV series that inspired the whole series, The Sandbaggers. Make sure you tune into the podcast to hear his thoughts on that, along with his own intriguing theory about the mysterious disappearance of the show’s creator, Ian Mackintosh. You can also hear him talk candidly about all his other comics projects, including DC spy series CheckMate, and lots more.

Listen here to hear the rest!

Whiteout Movie Is A Go

The long-in-development film adaptation of Greg Rucka's graphic novel Whiteout is finally happening, according to Dark Horizons. Whiteout tells the story of U.S. Marshall Carrie Stetko. While investigating a series of homicides in Antarctica, Stetko crosses paths with British Secret Service agent Lily Sharpe, who is on the trail of missing uranium. "Lily Sharpe" was later revealed to be an alias of Tara Chace, who went on to star in her own comic book series by Rucka, the sublime Queen & Country, as well as two novels (so far). The character's name was changed so that the movie rights to Chace and Q&C wouldn't be tied up with the rights to Whiteout, which makes sense. A seperate Queen & Country movie is also in development.

The Whiteout movie will be produced by Joel Silver through his Dark Castle Productions. Beautiful Kate Beckinsale will star as Stetko, who's supposed to be a Plain Jane (she seems miscast, but maybe she'll surprise me), and Dominic Sena, who made the forgettable Swordfish and Gone In Sixty Seconds, will direct. Too bad. In the hands of a great director, this snowbound thriller would make a very interesting movie. Like Beckinsale, I hope Sena surprises me. Filming begins in March in Manitoba. As of an older draft of the script, the British agent character had been changed to a man, the feeling at the time being that two women couldn't carry a movie. (Yes, that's how they think in Hollywood!) I don't know if that's still the case. Come to think of it, Beckinsale would make a much better Lily Sharpe than Carrie Stetko...

Queen & Country, meanwhile, is not cancelled, as has been rumored, but merely delayed. Again. Rucka himself confirms this on his message board. Issue 32 (and hopefully more thereafter) is still in the pipeline, as is a third novel.

You can read a free sample of the Whiteout graphic novel here.

3. Greg Rucka
Thank God Greg Rucka’s once again relevant enough to make this list! How did it happen? A new issue of his spy comic book Queen & Country finally came out this week! If that doesn’t excite you, then you’re really missing out. Queen & Country is the best current, ongoing spy saga in any medium. It’s a supposedly bimonthly (but really more like tri-monthly or quarterly) black and white comic put out by indie publisher Oni Press. Story arcs typically run four issues or so, and once they are finished they are collected into a trade paperback. There are currently about eight or nine volumes, I think, counting the Declassified stories. There are also two amazing Q&C novels, A Gentleman’s Game and Private Wars.

Q&C is not in the James Bond family of spying. It’s a "realistic" kind of spy story, set firmly in the real world, owing more to Deighton, LeCarre, and, most of all, the gritty 70s TV series Sandbaggers than to Ian Fleming. The heroine is Tara Chace, one of three "minders" for MI6. That’s the "special section." (Why are there always three in the fictional special section? Three 00 agents in Fleming, three Sandbaggers, three minders... Either they’re all inspired by each other or else somebody found a grain of truth and latched onto it.)

A typical Q&C story half focuses on Tara out in the field in some topical hot spot (yeah, that’s "topical," not "tropical." Remember, it’s not Bond!) and half focuses on her superior, Paul Crocker, the cynical, aqualine Director of Operations for SIS. (Yes, it’s exactly the same formula as Sandbaggers. Some people have even speculated that it’s intended to be a "sequel" of sorts. The similarities don’t detract from either series; both are utterly brilliant.) As Chace navigates the dangers of her mission, Crocker navigates the equally treacherous corridors of political power in Whitehall and MI6 Headquarters. It’s a testament to Rucka’s writing that I’m usually even more captivated by Crocker’s storyline. It takes real talent to mine such great suspense from office politics and bureaucracy. If only 24 could get that right! Rucka shows that you can get intense drama out of actual, realistic office politics at a spy agency. Yet on 24, they don’t even try. Instead, they resort to soap opera theatrics and repetitive pissing contests to generate tension at CTU, and every time the show cuts from Jack Bauer back to CTU, it loses me. Rucka actually makes the office politics the most interesting part!

Of course, it helps that he crafts some of the most lifelike characters in all spydom, real people with real issues trying to do the best they can at an unusual job. Read the first several arcs of Q&C and you’ll be hooked. You’ll so quickly be invested in Tara, Crocker and the supporting characters that you can’t possibly get enough of them!

Which is the problem.

Rucka is a very busy writer. In addition to putting out one novel a year (this year it was one in his "Atticus Kodiac" mystery series instead of Q&C), he’s probably DC Comics’ most prolific writer. And unfortunately he’s embroiled in their ambitious 52 project, which chronicles an entire year in the DC universe week by week. (He’s also writing CheckMate, a comic that tries to do "Queen & Country in the DC Universe," but I gave up after a few issues because unless you follow every DC title religiously, trying to keep up with the convoluted politics of the DC Universe is even harder than keeping up with the real life global politics that serve as a backdrop to Q&C!) I’m sure that he does a good job with that stuff, too, and I’m sure there are grateful DC junkies, but I’m not one of them. I selfishly keep hoping he’ll turn his back on Batman and friends to give us monthly Queen & Country again!

That’s the frustrating part. The comic book comes out so infrequently these days that it’s next to impossible to keep up with the complex storyline from one issue to the next. For that reason, I recommend reading the series in trade paperback collections instead of individual issues. Buy the first two volumes together, and you’ll breeze through them. Read them in order, pausing to read Declassified Vol. 1 between Q&C vols. 4 and 5. Continue in order, and then read the novels in order after you’ve read all the currently published comics. Trust me, if you’re a spy fan, you’ll be rewarded!


7. Elke Sommer
6. Mark Gatiss
5. Charlie Higson and Anthony Horowitz
4. Nick Fury
3. Greg Rucka
2. Roger Moore
1. Daniel Craig

List

For the first entry, to let potential readers know where I’m coming from, I’ll do a Top (double-oh) Seven list of people in the world of fictional spies to keep an eye on. People who are relevant right now. Such lists are by nature entirely arbitrary, and, for me, constantly changing. I’ll probably forget a bunch of people today that tomorrow or any other day might easily make such a list. But the point of this one is to let you know what kind of spy fan I am, what my tastes are. And to cram in a bit of news and some early reviews as well.

7. Elke Sommer
6. Mark Gatiss
5. Charlie Higson and Anthony Horowitz
4. Nick Fury
3. Greg Rucka
2. Roger Moore
1. Daniel Craig