Ashenden

During the First World War, Maugham served in British intelligence, and he turned that experience into these linked stories about a writer recruited to do quiet, morally uneasy work for his country. Ashenden, the agent of the title, carries messages, watches suspects, and now and then sends a man to his death, all without the glamour later spies would be given. The tone is dry, observant, and unsentimental, closer to real espionage than to adventure. First published in 1928, the book shaped how later writers such as Ian Fleming and John le Carre imagined the trade. This free PDF and EPUB edition offers one of the earliest honest portraits of spying, written by someone who actually did it.