Fiction is full of novels that depict the murky intrigue, grubby treachery, and moral compromise of the world’s second-oldest profession. Yet among those serious and credible representations are novels that poke fun at the spying game and its operatives, either with subtlety or with gusto.

Graham Greene and John le Carré lampooned the intelligence services in their respective black comedies Our Man in Havana (1958) and The Tailor of Panama (1996). Mick Herron's current series of espionage novels satirizes establishment spooks and politicos and presents the ragtag bunch of failed agents, or "slow horses," at London's Slough House—a place memorably described as "somewhere safe from aspiration"—as Britain’s first line of defense and last bastion of hope.

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