True Crime Spy

This is the incredible true story of the greatest spy you’ve never heard of - as told to the author by the woman herself. At the outbreak of World War Two, Nancy Wake’s glamorous life in the South of France seemed far removed from the fighting. But when her husband was called up for military service, Nancy felt she had just as much of a duty to fight for freedom. By 1943, her fearless undercover work even in the face of personal tragedy had earned her a place on the Gestapo’s "most wanted" list.

In the boot were six homemade pipe bombs, all linked to detonate at the same time from a single call on a brand-new pay-as-you-go phone found on the target. Special Branch also found Chinese Type 56 assault rifles with eight full magazines of ammunition. His target was a local school. He planned to attack two coaches of teenagers returning home after a school trip to France. Approximately 60 children, their accompanying teachers and their waiting parents. He was going to kill them all.

What's it like to be a spy? Glamorous and exciting? Just like James Bond? Find out in these true tales of international espionage. Hear about the Internet spy who hacked into military secrets - and ended up dead; the ruthless emperor who spied on his own army; and the double agent who was awarded medals for bravery - by the country he had betrayed. Discover amazing facts about equipment, codes and disguises and enter the intriguing world of real-life spies!

In the fall of 1961, KGB assassin Bogdan Stashinsky defected to West Germany. After spilling his secrets to the CIA, Stashinsky was put on trial in what would be the most publicized assassination case of the entire Cold War. The publicity stirred up by the Stashinsky case forced the KGB to change its modus operandi abroad and helped end the career of Aleksandr Shelepin, one of the most ambitious and dangerous Soviet leaders.

BKA-Rechtsmediziner Dr. Fred Abel arbeitet unter Hochdruck an einem großen Fall: Ein winziger Einstich in der Kniekehle eines Toten verrät ihm, dass einer der gefährlichsten Killer der letzten Zeit weiterhin sein Unwesen treibt. Doch bevor Abel ihn stoppen kann, wird er in heikler Mission in den osteuropäischen Pseudostaat Transnistrien geschickt. Dort soll er zwei Mordopfer identifizieren, die in Kalkfässern gelagert wurden und fast vollständig zersetzt sind.

The longest serving spy for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Charles Howard "Dick" Ellis came to New York at the beginning of World War II as deputy to William Stephenson at British Security Coordination (BSC) and helped set up for William Donovan the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), what would eventually evolve into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Ellis allegedly received prior warning of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and, through the conduit of Stephenson, relayed that warning to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Robert Baer was known inside the CIA as perhaps the best operative working the Middle East. Dana was originally tasked for Agency background checks, but always wanted more. When Bob and Dayna met on a mission in Sarajevo, it wasn’t love at first sight. But there was something there, a spark. And as the danger escalated and their affection for each other grew, they realized it was time to leave “the Company,” to somehow rediscover the people they’d once been. As worldly as they both were, the couple didn’t realize at first that turning in their Agency ID cards would not be enough to put their covert past behind.

Before Edward Snowden's infamous data breach, the largest theft of government secrets was committed by an ingenious traitor whose intricate espionage scheme and complex system of coded messages were made even more baffling by his dyslexia. His name is Brian Regan, but he came to be known as the Spy Who Couldn't Spell.

1920s India. Flames of revolt against colonial rule had engulfed the country, making the British tense. They knew domestic spies were essential to track and quell the calls for independence. Nandlal Kapur, like many young Indian men, was recruited as a spy. But, while the pay was good and the life adventurous, Nandlal restless and uneasy, his love for his country at constant odds with his new reality. As he travelled through India on various missions, and met revolutionaries from all walks of life demanding freedom from oppression, he grew determined to attack the beast from within.

Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. Inside the traitor was a man of loyalty; inside the villain was a hero. The problem for Chapman, his spymasters, and his lovers was to know where one persona ended and the other began. In 1941, after training as a German spy in occupied France, Chapman was parachuted into Britain with a revolver, a wireless, and a cyanide pill, with orders from the Abwehr to blow up an airplane factory. Instead, he contacted MI5, the British Secret Service.

In 1978 the Bulgarian author and dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated by a poisoned umbrella on Waterloo Bridge in London. His murder is the most iconic killing in almost five decades of the Cold War, and no one has ever been prosecuted for it. The Umbrella Murder reveals the real architect and hit man behind this spectacular killing: a spy code-named Piccadilly who worked for the Bulgarian secret service and the KGB, who has been hiding for more than forty years.

Decorated army officer Major Ed Dames tells the shocking true story of his time asoperations and training officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency's top-secret Psychic Intelligence Unit. Together with his PSI Spyteam, Dames used the practice of remote viewing to uncover accurate and verifiable military intelligence by going where no intel operatives on the ground could go - into the very mind of the enemy.

What can you learn from a CIA spy who spent his career artfully manipulating regular people to steal high-value secrets? Plenty! In this explosive book, former intelligence officer Peter Warmka unveils detailed methodologies that he and other threat actors use to breach the security of their targets, whether they’re high-profile individuals or entire organizations.

From the snowy Soviet shooting range to the heat and dust of Africa, nothing is what it seems. And neither is Sue Dobson. The image of South Africa in the 1980's as the golden paradise on the tip of the African continent conceals a brutal, racist Apartheid regime. Those who oppose it risk their lives. Beauty and brutality go hand in hand.

True Believer reveals the life of Noel Field, an American who betrayed his country and crushed his family. Field, once a well-meaning and privileged American, spied for Stalin during the 1930s and '40s. Then, a pawn in Stalin's sinister master strategy, Field was kidnapped and tortured by the KGB and forced to testify against his own Communist comrades.

The fascinating, improbable true story of Maxwell Knight - the great MI5 spymaster and inspiration for the James Bond character M. Maxwell Knight was perhaps the greatest spymaster in history. He did more than anyone in his era to combat the rising threat of fascism in Britain during World War II, in spite of his own history inside this movement. He was also truly eccentric - a thrice-married jazz aficionado who kept a menagerie of exotic pets - and almost totally unqualified for espionage. Yet he had a gift for turning practically anyone into a fearless secret agent.

Many terms were bestowed upon the mysterious Fritz Duquesne throughout his colorful life, but perhaps the most fitting ever attributed to him was: "the most dangerous prisoner to have ever lived." But before this Boer warrior-turned-spy reached the heights of infamy that awarded him such acclaim, Fritz Joubert Duquesne lived a life of adventure that many people wouldn’t experience in a hundred lifetimes. From a young age, Fritz harboured a burning resentment toward the British army, stemming from the brutal treatment suffered by his family during the Anglo-Boer wars.

In the summer of 1975, 17-year-old Eva Dillon's family was living in New Delhi when her father was exposed as a CIA spy. Eva had long believed that her father was a US State Department employee. She had no idea that he was handling the CIA's highest ranking double agent - Dmitri Fedorovich Polyakov, a Soviet general whose code name was TOPHAT. Dillon's father and Polyakov had a close friendship that went back years, to their first meeting in Burma in the mid-1960s.

The true story of a mysterious, dashing stuntman-turned-spy who may have been behind John F. Kennedy's assassination. His name was René Dussaq. He was born in Buenos Aires and educated in Geneva and Cuba. He was a daring WWII paratrooper who parachuted behind enemy lines for dangerous undercover work in support of the French Resistance. He was a handsome, charming man who briefly worked as a Hollywood stuntman. He was also a spy who may have killed John F. Kennedy.

Known as Fritz to his German spy-handlers and Zig-Zag to the British secret service, Eddie Chapman was a man of many faces. While his early life was rife with petty crime, gang activity and a dishonorable discharge from the British military, Chapman’s unique skills were eventually sought out by Nazi Germany, and after convincing them he could use his criminal contacts to sabotage the English forces, he was quickly recruited.