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SEX & ESPIONAGE Nigel West, HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF SEXSPIONAGE. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009. 400p. bibl. index. $85.00, ISBN 978-0810859999.
Reviewed by Rebecca Tolley-Stokes
Using sex to obtain information is a trick as old as the Bible. In this volume from Scarecrow's Historical Dictionaries of Intelligence and Counterintelligence series, author Nigel West even mentions Sampson's Delilah specifically as an early practitioner of "sexspionage" (p. xxvi).
Actually, few of the entries in the Historical Dictionary of Sexspionage have anything to do with sex per se (that is, the act of sexual intercourse), but many feature a woman as an agent of intrigue. West writes that "love and sex are often cited as factors in the transformation of an otherwise conscientious public servant into a traitor," but in many of the accounts here, sex itself is merely implied or sexual overtones seem vaguely present in the background (p. xxiv).
West, whose specialization is British...