Why 1960 is the perfect year for a spy novel
An Olympic village in the Sierra, a U-2 shot down over Sverdlovsk, and an aircraft so secret it did not officially exist.
1960 is a hinge. The world was performing peace at Squaw Valley while, in the Nevada desert, engineers were assembling an aircraft designed to fly higher and faster than anything an adversary could reach.
That contradiction is the engine of the novel. Diplomacy in the daylight, tradecraft after dark, and a country trying to keep a secret large enough to change the balance of power.
I wanted the spycraft to be recognizable to people who know the period: dead drops, cut-outs, surveillance detection routes, and the slow, patient work of counterintelligence — not gadgets.
The Cold War was real. So was the price paid by the people who fought it in places that were never named on a map.