#top 10s

Top 10 female spies in fiction

Women’s role in espionage, largely written by women, leans less on explosions and more on perception, nuance and explorations of sacrifice – though they still kick ass

Spy fiction is a genre of titans: Rudyard Kipling, W Somerset Maugham, John Buchan, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, Len Deighton, John le Carré. That list will structure most histories of the genre. However, it is only half the picture, reflecting neither the true history of spy fiction nor espionage itself. These authors and their most famous heroes are all male. But for as long as there have been spies, there have been female spies. In the growing espionage machine of the 20th century, we see women in every area, from surveillance and propaganda, to code breaking and cryptography, and agent and double agent. Today’s spy world considers diversity a strategic asset.

As a child, I bought Fleming’s From Russia With Love in Pan paperback because I wanted to try writing spy fiction. I read Fleming on repeat, falling in love with his characterisation and vivid style. I would make notes on my neighbours – luckily very tolerant people – and turn their movements into mystery stories. In my imaginary games, I was James Bond. I wanted to be the hero, not a supporting character.

In Double Or Nothing, the first novel in a series commissioned by the Ian Fleming Estate to expand the world of 007, Bond has vanished and time is running out. A new ensemble cast of double O agents must work against the clock to find Bond and save the world from climate catastrophe. The novel introduces readers to Johanna Harwood, named after the first woman to write Bond, the co-screenwriter of Dr No and From Russia With Love. Harwood trains as a trauma surgeon before a life-altering event brings her to Moneypenny’s attention, now head of the double O section (in the world’s most overdue promotion). Harwood becomes 003. I hope to empower women to see themselves as the hero, while reflecting the diversity of real espionage.

In a genre outwardly dominated by male writers and heroes, I sought out female spies in fiction to inspire me. Here are my Top 10.

1. While Still We Live, Helen MacInnes (1944)

Englishwoman Sheila Matthews is visiting friends in Poland when the Nazis invade. Refusing to abandon her loved ones or her ideals, she enters a dangerous game as a double agent embedded within the SS by the Polish underground. Helen MacInnes is the spy writer I’ve been searching for. Lyrical yet unflinching, anti-totalitarian, and packed with details informed by travelling through Europe alongside her spy husband prior to the second world war. I only discovered MacInnes recently. Despite 21 novels – many bestsellers and required reading for allied intelligence agencies – and four cinematic adaptations, you are most likely to find her today on lists of forgotten authors. MacInnes drills into the particular risks and courage of female spies, encapsulated in this brisk yet subversive statement: “If she had been a man, she would never have tried it.”

2. The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen (1948)

Stella is caught between her lover Robert, a spy, and Harrison, a counterespionage agent convinced Robert is a traitor. Forced to become a spy or traitor herself, against either the state or her heart, Stella’s battle is a luminous exploration of loyalty and truth. Drawing on Bowen’s experiences in wartime London, and perhaps her work with the Ministry of Information, The Heat of the Day captures the precariousness of life during the blitz.

3. Moonraker, Ian Fleming (1955)

When Fleming sat down to write Casino Royale in 1952, he intended to “write the spy story to end all spy stories”. He did, reinventing the genre and creating an icon. Fleming is less known for his female characters, perhaps overshadowed by their cinematic incarnations and the trope of the “Bond girl.” It’s a shame, because Fleming invests them with rich back stories and motivations. Best of all is cool-headed and capable Gala Brand, a special branch agent embedded with suspicious rocket-engineer Drax. It’s Brand’s mission that Bond joins, and her first impression is damning: “He could probably shoot all right and talk foreign languages and do a lot of tricks that might be useful abroad. But what good could he do down here without any beautiful spies to make love to.” The tender relationship that emerges delivers the most poignant ending to any Bond novel.

4. The Hothouse By the East River, Muriel Spark (1973)

Paul and Elsa were involved in secret propaganda work in the second world war. Now living in 1970s New York, everyone thinks Elsa is delusional, haunted by the memory of a German PoW. But could he really be back from the dead? In this hallucinatory novel, Spark draws on her work at a black ops intelligence site where she “took in a whole world of method and intrigue in the dark field of black propaganda or psychological warfare, and the successful and purposeful deceit of the enemy”.

5. The Little Drummer Girl, John le Carré (1983)

Le Carré’s only female protagonist, Charlie, is a British activist and actor accustomed to abusive relationships, the perfect prey for Israeli intelligence, who recruit her to go undercover with a suspected Palestinian bomber. Caught between two men and two claims for justice, Charlie’s search for agency drives the novel. One of Le Carré’s deepest character studies.

6. Black Widow: The Name of the Rose by Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Daniel Acuña (2011)

Debuting as a Soviet spy in 1964, a year after the comics launch of my favourite female spy, Modesty Blaise, Natasha Romanoff initially lacked the depth of her iconic contemporary, instead offering a fairly narrow femme fatale. However, a near 60-year run – alongside Scarlett Johansson’s powerful performance – has layered the character, offering a mine of conflict, which Liu digs into here as Black Widow’s past threatens to destroy her. We see the strength and sacrifice required to create a cohesive identity from so many fractures.

7. A Quiet Life, Natasha Walter (2016)

Spanning 1939-53 in the US and England, Laura Last’s desire for freedom from patriarchy leads to communist sympathies and a double life as one half of a married spy couple at the heart of the establishment. Natasha Walter brilliantly illustrates the dangerous power of someone taught to be a “wind-up doll” by society: “It felt more natural than she thought it would, to speak words that were not her own.”

8. Transcription, Kate Atkinson (2018)

Transcription follows Juliet Armstrong, recruited as a spy in 1940, through the second world war and into the cold war, from MI6 to the BBC, in a deconstruction of Britain’s national identity and institutions. Kate Atkinson plays on the presumptions we bring to the genre with a brilliantly sly use of point of view.

9. Who Is Vera Kelly? Rosalie Knecht (2018)

Knecht draws out the parallels between the covert life of a spy and a closeted queer woman in this compulsive cold war novel that moves from the suburban US to subversive Greenwich Village and student radicals in Buenos Aires. The frank yet vulnerable voice grabs you from page one and doesn’t let you go.

10. American Spy, Lauren Wilkinson (2019)

As a black FBI agent in the 1960s, Marie Mitchell’s career is thwarted by the all-white boys’ club until she is handed a mission to seduce and undermine the revolutionary president of Burkina Faso. Lauren Wilkinson illuminates the untold stories of the cold war in a searing exploration of belonging, race and gender.

shit i dont know how aesthetics work bare with me here

10: post apocalyptic type shit i think is fun

9: cyberpunk, i think it looks cool

8: whatever aesthetic the 1959 chevrolet impala is. fancy old car aesthetic (?)

7: popart

6: steampunk

5:kidcore

4: late 2000s elementary school experience

3: vacation dad

2: ugly neon powerpoint

1: regency era

(this tierlist was made possible by aesthetics.fandoms.com)

Ooooh this is a fun one~! Gonna go off overall favs rather than on anything more specific~! Warning spoilers ahead too

For The Sims main series offers a diverse array of towns and neighborhoods packaged with numerous premade households. Some of these towns, however, have worse vibes than others. Some clearly have a dark vibe clouding up the air, while others appear pretty bright and normal until some of their darker lore and secrets are discussed. Here is my ranking of the Top 10 creepiest towns in the main series, with an explanation why. And, of course, this is just my little opinion, so feel free to discuss in reblogs or comments :)

10. Sunset Valley (The Sims 3)

Sunset Valley, for most players, is the first town they will play in upon purchasing The Sims 3, unless they purchase expansion packs with it. It is the only town shipped with the base game, with all other towns being added via expansion packs or store content. On the surface, it’s a bright and plain looking town, with nothing too noticeably creepy about it (if one chooses to ignore the glowing eyes in the mine, that is). What makes it (barely) qualify for this list, however, is the surplus of gravestones in the cemetery that do not seem to have any relation to the town’s living residents. Among these deceased sims are Tragic Clown (a depressed clown that appears numerous times in the series) and Opal Suarley, who was a child at the time of her death. These sims can be easily overlooked when playing the game, as a player must make the active choice to resurrect them to experience who they are as people--otherwise, they’re just forgotten deceased sims who reside eternally in Sunset Valley. I would also like to note that although the Goth family graveyard makes a return in this game, the graveyard now contains a stone for Lolita Goth, who, when checking her family tree, seems to have no actual familial relation to the Goth family, making her connection a total mystery.

9. Champs Les Sims (The Sims 3)

Champs Les Sims is one of three vacation towns shipped with The Sims 3: World Adventures, and, though it is certainly not the only town to contain winding tombs and unexplained graves, its creepier nature is supported by the fact that its tombs do not contain the same spiritual background that those of Egypt and China do. While the spiritual reasoning behind Egyptian and Chinese tombs is very clear, often due to ancient Egyptian or Chinese religious practices, why elaborate tombs and catacombs would be used in France is a little less clear. Therefore, the tombs, catacombs, and abandoned Chateau du Landgraab make Champs Les Sims a little more unsettling, especially when the skeletons and remnants of past explorers are found in them. In addition, a couple unmarked and unexplained gravestones can be found in the town, most notably in the Forgotten Burial Mound. Exploring tombs in Champs Les Sims evoke an even stronger sense of fear and dread than exploring tombs in Al Simhara or Shang Simla, but because the atmosphere of the town above ground is quaint and pleasant, the town won’t be making it past 9th place on this list.

8. Forgotten Hollow (The Sims 4)

When I first started thinking up ideas for this list, I didn’t think any town from The Sims 4 would make it to the list, only because the fourth game lacks most of the creepiness factor (as I discuss in my first post, “Top 5 Most Frustrating Alterations in The Sims 4 Timeline”) that the previous games hold onto strongly. However, as I thought on it longer, I realized a couple towns in the fourth game unsettled me a bit more than many of the towns in previous games. One of these was Forgotten Hollow, which was added with the game pack The Sims 4: Vampires. To state the obvious, part of what adds to the creepiness of the town is that it is inhabited by vampires, which is slightly undone by the sexiness of the Vatore siblings (half joking, but actually not xD). What DOES contribute heavily to the creep factor is the totally suspicious graveyard behind Count Vladislaus Straud IV’s mansion, possibly hinting to sims he has drank a little too heavily from, as the lore establishes that his view on vampirism is more conservative than the more progressive views of the Vatores, which generally involve refraining from harming sims. One grave also contains two unsettling dolls placed at its base. In addition, another grave and monument can be found near the lake, which also contain no explanation. Overall, a large portion of the creepiness of Forgotten Hollow is due to the mysterious nature of much of the neighborhood, with almost all of the focus being skewed toward the residents, rather than the environment itself.

7. Strangerville (The Sims 4)

I said that while thinking out this list in more depth, I thought of a couple towns from The Sims 4 that had a noticeably scarier vibe than the other towns of the game, and Strangerville was the other one besides Forgotten Hollow. The town, introduced in the aptly-named The Sims 4: StrangerVille, is a fully-formed storyline in itself, and a plague-horror story at that. Before you get into the nitty-gritty and explore WHY the town is suffering from such a plague, it appears to you at first as a town with strange little spores in the air, a suspicious lab quite literally called “The ██████ Lab” (it would be super interesting to see theories on the actual name of the lab), and, perhaps the most disturbing detail, visibly possessed sims running around the town. Possessed sims display wide, soulless eyes, and an unnatural and toothy grin. In addition, they run with their arms swinging behind them and their head cocked sharply to the side. If a possessed sim is playable and in the, I quote, PØŞŞ€ŞŞ€Đ emotion, one might notice that the sim cannot perform their normal actions, and anything they think or say is super cryptic and stylized in the same font as the emotion. If you take your sim through the full journey of curing the epidemic and finding the source of the illness (spoiler alert), your sim will come face-to-face with a huge, monstrous mother plant in the basement of the lab, which they must defeat once recruiting a team of immunized sims. This lore, along with the disturbing appearance of possessed sims, makes Strangerville a super unsettling town to play in.

6. Downtown (The Sims 2)

Downtown is actually a sub-neighborhood in The Sims 2, which means it can be added as a part two to any main neighborhood in the game. Other sub-neighborhoods include the three vacation destinations, the three colleges, and Bluewater Village. Downtown was added with The Sims 2: Nightlife--the very obvious predecessor to TS3: Late Night and TS4: Get Famous, and partial predecessor to TS4: City Living. However, Downtown stood out as a particularly creepy version of an urban nightlife destination. At neighborhood view, the town is very dark, and it’s hard to make out which building is which. Once you enter most lots, the environment brightens up, and you’re unlikely to run into anything disturbing (expect for Mrs. Crumplebottom). There are two lots in particular, though, that carry the creep factor of Downtown all the way to 6th place. The first is Gothier Green Lawns: a graveyard with the graves of all but two members of the Tricou family, as well as a hole in the ground, possibly intended to be another grave. The Tricou family is a strange family that died mysteriously and is theorized by some to be a family of vampires (more on that below). The grandfather of the family, Jon Smith/Jonathan Tricou, fathered a handful of teens who live as townies in Downtown, and the whole family can be resurrected if one of those teens is added to a family and resurrects Jon Smith. Near the graveyard is a mansion called the House of Fallen Trees, which is thought to be the former residence of the Tricou family. In the yard is the graves of teens Fricorith and Gvaudoin Tricou, as well as suspected subsequent resident Rainelle Neengia. The mansion is mostly empty and has a perpetual dark aura in the rooms, regardless of how many lamps are present. Finally, the home has an extremely deep basement, which contains a pair of coffins at the bottoms, leading to the vampire theory.

5. Moonlight Falls (The Sims 3)

Added in The Sims 3: Supernatural, Moonlight Falls was literally designed to be a town full of supernatural inhabitants. Therefore, it’s not at all surprising to find witches, vampires, ghosts, fairies, and werewolves roaming around town. While the supernatural aura is off-putting to some on its own, what really makes it creepy is its handful of abandoned structures, odd bits of secret lore, and holy moly the paintings that change at night. A few strange abandoned structures, such as wooden shacks, are scattered around the town. The spookiest thing, though, is arguably the library. The basement of the building contains a bookcase which, when examined, has a secret door behind it. In the secret room behind the door is the urn belonging to Peanut Bahl, who died due to the magic jelly bean. Besides that, a spooky sim from the previous game makes a reappearance in the Hallowed Grounds Cemetery; Fricorith Tricou appears once again, having died by fire. Because the storyline of The Sims 3 takes place, on the whole, 50 years prior to the events of The Sims 2, this would mean that Fricorith’s grave was relocated out of Moonlight Falls and back to his family’s mansion in Downtown. Why such a relocation would take place is unclear, but it certainly adds to the mystery of the town. Also, the town seems to have a slightly dark aura about it, even if it’s actually not that dim.

4. Bridgeport (The Sims 3)

Essentially acting as the Downtown of The Sims 3, Bridgeport is the town shipped with The Sims 3: Late Night. This expansion added vampires to the game before TS3: Supernatural added them again, and also added the vampire’s eye gemstone, for which I haven’t found a single use yet. The town is split between two vampire factions, essentially with a similar issue to the vampire factions in Forgotten Hollow. The town is most recognizable at night, and its creepiest features are the instances of gravestones in seemingly random locations. The most famous gravestone from the town is that of Lotta Greaves, who is buried in a strange and secluded area behind Plasma 501. She was theorized to have been murdered by vampires, with the most likely suspect being Elvira Slayer. The shady hallway one must take to get to the area with her grave looks as though it’s straight out of a paranormal film, and the area she’s buried in itself looks like those in true crime documentaries. Another, lesser-talked-about deceased sim is Sinjon Frank, who is a vampire that died from thirst. His gravestone resides between dumpsters behind the theater, which is yet another true-crime-esque place for a gravestone to be. This is one of two towns in The Sims 3 you’ll hear me describe as having intense true crime series vibes, and for that, it arrives at 4th place on the list.

3. Strangetown (The Sims 2)

Strangetown is the town that started it all, in terms of deeply spooky and disturbing sims lore, and its theories lead into some of the darkest territory in sims lore. Honestly, where should I even begin? The whole town is very open about the existence of aliens, with Pollination Technician #9 being just another resident of the neighborhood. A crashed spaceship is visible in neighborhood view, and, according to the lore, Bella Goth ended up here with all her memories wiped after being abducted from Pleasantview (and, apparently, with a new face as well). Would you believe that aliens are the least shocking thing about this town? A sim named Nervous Subject (you may think this isn’t his birth name, but you’d be surprised) is being held captive for experiments by scientists Circe and Loki Beaker, and sim Pascal Curious is heavily pregnant with an alien baby after being abducted (and, if his brother Vidcund uses the telescope shortly after entering the lot, he will also be abducted). Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the town is in the household of Nervous’s birth mother, Olive Specter. Olive, as heavily hinted at by the memory system, was impregnated by the Grim Reaper and gave birth to Nervous, who was taken by the social worker. Because her backyard is filled with the graves of numerous sims, some related to her and some random, it is thought that she began a killing spree, possibly with the intent to meet Grim once again. She was romantically involved with three of the sims, and two of them are the parents of her niece, Ophelia Nigmos. We enter the Specter household when Olive is only a couple days from death, possibly catching a serial killer at the tail end of her life. If that wasn’t bad enough, most of the deceased sims in her backyard are deeply corrupt and will cause major bugs if resurrected.

2. Twinbrook (The Sims 3)

As I said about Bridgeport, some towns in the sims series have enough true crime energy to singlehandedly put them on this list. Twinbrook from The Sims 3: Ambitions definitely qualifies. The town is swampy, foggy, and overall dreary, but what really sets off alarm bells are the various gravestones and urns scattered around the town. To save on space, I’ll just give a quick summary of each. First up is the urn of Di. L. Emma Riddle, which stands lonely in the attic of Anna-Liza Riddle. Next, the urn of Pixie Carlton sits on a drawer in the Racket home (and the Rackets are a family of criminals). The grave of B. Vernon Castor sits outside Burton’s Boxcar Diner, but this is one of the least suspicious random gravestones. The grave of Lacy Darer (likely Juan Darer’s wife) is at Juan’s Pick-n-Pull Junkyard, and it’s worth noting that Lacy died by fire, and there are remnants of a burned down structure on the lot belonging to Juan. Finally, the grave of Macy Clay (speculated to be Lacy’s twin and Harwood Clay’s sister or wife) can be found in the back of the Cleanesque Laundromat--she also died by fire. I think we can all agree, that’s an excessive amount of suspicious deaths in this town. To add to the weird vibes of this town, many of the residents and townies have extremely punny names (ex. Lucy Ferne, Mollie Kewell, Cho Sonwhun, etc.), and there is one family--the Bayless family--that is heavily implied to have incest in its recent family history (and an urn for Fly Bayless in their house, though it is not known how he is related). Overall, though the bayou itself is somewhat beautiful, the sketchy nature of the populace sours the view of the town. One nice thing, though, is that Bridgeport is visible on the horizon.

1. Midnight Hollow (The Sims 3)

If you’ve never perused The Sims 3 Store for bonus towns, you may have totally missed out on possibly the most unsettling town in the game. It takes a very short amount of time examining this town’s landscape and the bios of its households to realize something is very wrong with this neighborhood. In fact, the blood-red ground saturating its forest and graveyard is the tip of the iceberg. First off, every sim in the town has one of two bios, which is way too cult-y for comfort. The Doe family is heavily implied to have a dark past, and lest we forget, “John Doe” and “Jane Doe” are names given to unidentified murder victims in the world of crime. “Edmund Flynn,” who is actually Jackson Bishop, quite literally stole the identity of the real Edmund Flynn to gain his estate. Lucien Hyde is described as a “tortured artist” and is a parody of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, but looks more like Marilyn Manson. Roderick Synapse is an evil scientist who canonically kidnapped Sarah Holden with the intention of dissecting her brain. The Yates family is a reference to the movie Psycho. The Salas family is entirely made up of playable ghosts. And, if all that wasn’t disturbing enough, guess who’s back? You guessed it! Olive Specter makes a return with only three gravestones in her yard, and, fortunately for her, Nervous Subject has not been taken yet (and...this proves that for some reason, she named her son Nervous Subject). This time, the family bio almost says outright that Nervous is the son of the Grim Reaper. The town’s backstory is narrated by Olive, who essentially calls it her safe space. Hopefully, there’s no more evidence needed that Midnight Hollow is the creepiest town in the series.

oh some people bout to be real mad at me for this one i fear but someone has to do it so!