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> Other pop novelists, like John le Carré and Tom Clancy, may flavor their work with a few real-world scenarios and some spy lingo...

This seems like an unfair characterization of Carré who actually worked as a spy for both MI5 and MI6 and who introduced the word 'mole' as slang for a sleeper agent into the english language.

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You're not kidding - calling le Carre a "pop novelist" to begin with, let alone lumping him in with a hack like Tom Clancy, is selling him desperately short.

> lumping him in with a hack like Tom Clancy

While not all of his 17 best sellers merited their sales, I'd say a handful of them were good enough to set Clancy a far cry away from a 'hack'.

Did Tom Clancy write each of those books? It'd be interesting to see if he's less hacky if we ignore the ghost-written books.

And Le Care was a real spook (SIS) - he had had to leave because he was burned by Philby.

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