Tradecraft: William Boyd's Cold War Berlin-Set SPY CITY Series Gets Revived with Dominic Cooper

Several years ago, around the same time that Olen Steinhauer's Berlin Station was announced, another Berlin-set spy series from another major novelist was also announced: William Boyd's Cold War-set Spy City. But it sadly never came to be at that time. Now, five years later, though, it's finally happening!

Originally set up as a 10-part series at Gaumont, Deadline reports that Boyd's vision will finally come to life as a 6-part series for Miramax and Germany's H&V Entertainment and ZDF. And it will star a face who's become quite familiar to spy fans--Dominic Cooper. Cooper starred as Tony Stark's father, Howard Stark, in Captain America: The First Avenger, and again on the excellent late 1940s-set spy TV series Agent Carter. He also played Ian Fleming in the BBC miniseries Fleming. He'll continue his run of period spy shows in Spy City by playing a British agent dispatched to Berlin in 1961 to root out a traitor in the UK Embassy or among the Allies, shortly before the construction of the Berlin Wall. "The city, declared by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev as 'the most dangerous place on earth,' is teeming with spies and double agents. One wrong move could trigger the looming threat of nuclear war as American, British and French troops in West Berlin remain separated from their Soviet and East German counterparts by nothing more than an imaginary line."

William Boyd is the author of the James Bond continuations novel Solo, as well as the excellent generational spy saga Restless  (which the author adapted into a miniseries with Agent Carter's Hayley Atwell) and what might very well be my favorite novel so far this century, Any Human Heart. That one's not a spy novel, though it does feature some spying, and Ian Fleming as a minor character. It was also turned into a miniseries with Atwell, as well as Spooks' Matthew Macfadyan and Casino Royale's Tobias Menzies as Fleming. There are a lot of odd connections forming here! An intelligence analyst might even discern some sort of pattern. Can an announcement of Ms. Atwell co-starring in Spy City be far off? So far, Johanna Wokalek (The Baader Meinhof Complex) and Leonie Benesch (The Crown, Babylon Berlin) have been announced besides Cooper. Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Alexandre will direct.

When the project was first announced in its original, slightly longer format, Variety reported that Spy City "sheds light on the personal lives of spies and focuses on a group of men and women of different nationalities and backgrounds who are in the 'hornet’s nest' of divided Berlin." The Hollywood Reporter added, "Spy City is set in the hottest period of the cold war, when Berlin was the center of the global chess game between the powers of East and West. The series is billed as an intimate look at the men and women who risked everything to become spies."

In addition to being an internationally acclaimed novelist, Boyd is also a successful screenwriter. He co-wrote Richard Attenborough's Oscar-nominated biopic Chaplin (1992), adapted other people's novels into Mister Johnson (1990, starring Pierce Brosnan) and Sword of Honor (2001, starring Daniel Craig), and adapted his own novels A Good Man in Africa (1994, starring Sean Connery and Diana Rigg) and Stars and Bars (1988, not starring any James Bond, but starring Daniel Day-Lewis, which is also pretty good), among many other credits. He wrote and directed The Trench (1999), which also starred Craig. Besides Solo, his recent novels include the WWI espionage tale Waiting for Sunrise, the pharmaceutical thriller Ordinary Thunderstorms, and the short story "The Vanishing Game." The latter, Boyd's homage to John Buchan's The 39 Steps, is a great read and a great introduction to the author, as it's available for free (thanks to Land Rover) as an e-book from Amazon and as an audiobook download from Audible. It's a lot of fun, and I highly recommend it. Most of all, though, I can't wait for Spy City! I'm glad it's come back to life.
Thanks to Jack for the heads-up on this!

Bourne and Treadstone Live On in New Robert Ludlum Continuation Novels

After ten Bourne continuation novels (compared to just three by the character's creator), Eric Van Lustbader chose to hang up his proverbial holster last year, abandoning his previously announced eleventh series entry. But at the time I mused that probably wouldn't be the last we'd see of Robert Ludlum's bestselling character in print. And sure enough, it's not. The Ludlum estate isn't going to let that particular cash cow rest. In fact, they're doubling down! Not only will Bourne continuation novels resume next year under the stewardship of a new author, Brian Freeman (not to be confused with Charlie Muffin creator Brian Freemantle), but this fall will see the first book in a new series spun off from Ludlum's original Bourne trilogy, based on the Treadstone 71 program that first gave rise to the deadly Bourne identity. According to the Associated Press, Joshua Hood's The Treadstone Resurrection is due out September 17 as the first of the estate's new four-book deal with Putnam. It will be followed in 2020 by The Bourne Conspiracy by Brian Freeman. (If that title sounds familiar, it was also used for a Sierra videogame in 2008.) Hood is a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division and author of two military thrillers with good ratings on Amazon. Freeman is the author of multiple psychological thrillers, with three different series characters. Jason Bourne (aka David Webb) was created by Robert Ludlum and first appeared in his seminal 1980 novel The Bourne Identity (review here).

According to the publisher's blurb for The Treadstone Resurrection:

The first novel in an explosive new series inspired by Robert Ludlum's Bourne universe, The Treadstone Resurrection introduces an unforgettable hero and the shadowy world that forged him...

Treadstone made Jason Bourne an unstoppable force, but he's not the only one.

Operation Treadstone has nearly ruined Adam Hayes. The top-secret CIA Black Ops program trained him to be an all but invincible assassin, but it also cost him his family and any chance at a normal life. Which is why he was determined to get out. Working as a carpenter in rural Washington state, Adam thinks he has left Treadstone in the past, until he receives a mysterious email from a former colleague, and soon after is attacked by an unknown hit team at his job site.

Adam must regain the skills that Treadstone taught him--lightning reflexes and a cold conscience--in order to discover who the would-be killers are and why they have come after him now. Are his pursuers enemies from a long-ago mission? Rival intelligence agents? Or, perhaps, forces inside Treadstone? His search will unearth secrets in the highest levels of government and pull him back into the shadowy world he worked so hard to forget.

Hm. I have to admit, I'm a little dubious.... First, this version of Treadstone seems closer akin to the version in the popular Matt Damon movies than the one established by Ludlum in The Bourne Identity novel. Which makes sense, I suppose, since more people today probably know the character and the organization from the films, but personally I would hope for the author's estate to hew closer to his books. Second, I worry that this book may fall into the same traps that ensnared the Jeremy Renner Bourne spinoff movie, The Bourne Legacy (review here). Namely, why do the same exact thing that we've seen with the actual Bourne—namely, putting another former agent on the run from his own people? Why not try something different and show an active agent working successfully with and for the program? At least that would be a fresh take. But we'll see! Maybe this book will prove completely fresh.

Treadstone will also be resurfacing soon as a new USA TV series spun off from the films. I'm sure that's the reason for the Treadstone books, but I have no idea if they'll actually tie into the show at all or not. I would guess not. Van Lustbader's continuation novels were completely separate from the movies (even if they were clearly more inspired by Damon's virile take on the character than Ludlum's aging, reluctant assassin last seen in The Bourne Ultimatum—a very decisive conclusion to the series and fitting swan song for the literary chracter), despite both sharing the title The Bourne Legacy. My guess is that will be the case with Treadstone as well.

Eric Van Lustbader Quits as Bourne Continuation Author

Bestselling author Eric Van Lustbader announced today in an exclusive interview with The Real Book Spy that he is stepping down as the official author of the Jason Bourne continuation novels. Lustbader was hired by Robert Ludlum's estate in the early 2000s to continue the adventures of Ludlum's famous amnesiac assassin character following the success of the Matt Damon movies, despite Ludlum's own Bourne trilogy having reached a pretty definitive conclusion. From 2004 to 2016, Lustbader wrote ten Jason Bourne novels, far outpacing the character's creator. Furthermore, the author's previously announced eleventh Bourne novel, The Bourne Nemesis, will likely never see completion.

"What I found," he told the website,"when I started to go back and work on polishing the draft, was that I just didn’t want to do it. Every time I would sit down to do it, I would start writing something else and that made me realize, finally, that I just didn’t want to do it anymore." He elaborated, "I had pretty much said everything that I wanted to say with Bourne, and . . . I wanted to do something different. Something more."

Lustbader has maintained a grueling schedule over this past decade, most years producing both a Bourne continuation novel and an original novel featuring his own characters. He's not the first continuation author to become fatigued. John Gardner also grew weary balancing a James Bond novel every year during the 1980s and early '90s with his own (considerably lengthier) spy fiction (the excellent Herbie Kruger novels and the Secret Generations epic). Writing schedules like that can't be easy!

This likely isn't the last of Jason Bourne on the printed page. The Ian Fleming estate (operating first as Glidrose Publications, and later Ian Fleming Publications) commissioned Raymond Benson to continue the Bond series, and later settled on a strategy of appointing different authors for different books, with Anthony Horowitz recently becoming the first writer since Benson to pen more than one novel in the main series. The Ludlum Estate has followed a similar strategy with other series created by the late novelist. Numerous writers have tried their hands at Covert-One novels (a series which was handed off to other writers even in Ludlum's lifetime, and indeed created with that strategy in mind), and at least two writers have continued the adventures of Paul Janson, hero of one of Ludlum's final novels, The Janson Directive (review here). I strongly suspect we'll see another new Bourne novel sooner or later with a new name on the cover.

Meanwhile, head over to The Real Book Spy to read the entire, in-depth interview with Lustbader including his future plans.