The Spike (novel)

The Spike is a 1980 spy thriller novel by Arnaud de Borchgrave and Robert Moss (New York: Crown Publishers, 1980).

De Borchgrave and Moss envision a scenario in which the KGB exploits the attitudes of the unsuspecting Western media, which was allegedly more interested in unmasking CIA agents than stopping the Soviets, threatening to thwart Hockney's big scoop.

Time called the book a roman à clef for its fictionalized versions of real people and organizations, including Zbigniew Brzezinski and the radical left-wing magazine Ramparts.

In a 1980 interview with The New York Times, de Borchgrave mentions that he came up with the idea for a novel after he and his wife had to hide in the English countryside, after anonymous threats were made in response to a Newsweek article he wrote that named some of the terrorists behind the 1972 Munich massacre.

[1] The authors' 1983 follow-up, Monimbo, envisioned Miami race rioters as the pawns of Nicaraguan and Cuban communists.