A series of Cold War spy novels by William F. Buckley Jr. centered around the CIA agent Blackford Oakes. While there is some moral ambiguity, the author had a conscious intention to assume the Soviets were the bad guys and the books reflect that.
This series provides examples of:
- Black-and-Grey Morality: Good guys are grey but more or less ok. Communists are Black though sometimes have likable enough traits to make them dark grey.
- Born in the Wrong Century: Count Wintergrin in the novel Stained Glass.
- Commie Land: The whole premise of the series.
- Deadpan Snarker: Grahame Greene visits Kim Philby in Moscow to hear him complain of the disloyalty of a dissident. Whereupon Greene says, So you're down on treachery now?
- Historical Domain Character
- Intellectually Supported Tyranny: Sir Alastir Fleetwood, a scientist that uses a supertelescope he invented to read American diplomatic messages in Hi Jinx, and then gives them to the Russians.
- Insufferable Genius: Fleetwood.
- La Résistance: The title character of the novel The Story of Henri Tod is leader of an underground group in East Berlin.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: One character invites his lover to a tryst in Hitler's abandoned private railway car. In Hitler's own bed, no less.
- The Spymaster: Rufus.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Count Wintergrin.
- Worthy Opponent: Bolgin, the Russian Chief of Station in London in the novel High Jinx.
