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What a delightful discovery! This spy thriller, a #1 best seller when it was published in 1980, has since largely faded into obscurity.
The Spike is a “Roman à clef”, a novel with a key. This is an honored literary tradition with roots going back at least as far back as Dante’s Inferno.
The Spike was written at the dawn of the internet age, when the authors could not imagine readers being able to research the “keys” so conveniently. It was a bestseller when it was published, and reportedly sparked ...more
The Spike is a “Roman à clef”, a novel with a key. This is an honored literary tradition with roots going back at least as far back as Dante’s Inferno.
The Spike was written at the dawn of the internet age, when the authors could not imagine readers being able to research the “keys” so conveniently. It was a bestseller when it was published, and reportedly sparked ...more
Was glad to discover this title --one I hadn't heard about before. Seems to be the first of a series which ran to two installments featuring an ambitious young 1960s reporter following his ideals.
It is presumably the first collaborative project between two journalists of that era and naturally contains some conventional genre-writing. There are some obvious-devices-being-used-to-propel-the-story-along. It starts off fairly slow as the two writers clumsily build exposition. And you can see from ...more
It is presumably the first collaborative project between two journalists of that era and naturally contains some conventional genre-writing. There are some obvious-devices-being-used-to-propel-the-story-along. It starts off fairly slow as the two writers clumsily build exposition. And you can see from ...more
