The great John le Carré had it much easier. He wrote his espionage fiction mainly during the Cold War, when the concoctions of spy novelists and scriptwriters seemed to be in dialogue with reality.

Parker Sawyers and Alec Secăreanu in "Spy/Master." Credit: Courtesy of HBO Max With its Cold War paranoia and tangled web of secrets, HBO Max's Spy/Master makes for a solid entry into the canon ...