The Usborne Spy's Guidebook -- A Fantastic Feat in Technical Writing

It should be pointed out, makers of spy movies – particularly for kids – the Usborne Spy’s Guidebook does not once mention dangling from nearly-invisible wires as a method of infiltration. Nor does it mention bombs, guns, explosions, or any of the other things that tend to get Hollywood producers and Beavis and Butthead excited when they think of the movies.

Instead, the guidebook is filled with codes – including what they call the Pig-Pen, which I used as a kid because my mother showed it to me (I naively thought she made it up and that I would henceforth be able to send secret messages without any chance of being discovered) – disguises, trail markers and other more mundane bits of spycraft that a clever kid could reproduce if he had enough friends interested in playing real-world Spy vs. Spy.

Yes, it is indeed a book for kids. But for someone like me who is mildly interested in the world of spies thanks to things like The Conet Project, it was fun to read. Enough to see a glimpse of the spy world without getting too muddy. And certainly enough to keep kids – and willing adults – busy with their own spycraft should the mood arise.



There seem to be quite a few editions and iterations of this book – with one going for $104 currently on Ebay. So maybe this is a luckier 50 cent thrift store find than I originally thought. (The price does appear to be an outlier, as Ebay also has copies available for $4; there might be something I’m missing about the more expensive version.

To go on a different tack for just a moment -- I marvel at this book as a feat in technical writing. The text is crisp, the descriptions are clear, and where an illustration is needed you don't have to go looking for one because it's right there. A casual reader might breeze through this book and not think much about its construction, but since I have my technical writing hat on I'm marveling at how they pulled everything together. You could hand this book to an eight-year-old or an eighty-year-old willing to learn and they could master these spy techniques pretty quickly. The book even includes activities disguised as games where the reader can apply what's being taught.