Spies. Spies are cool, and Cold War spies are the coolest of the spies.* Obviously, there are spies from other eras. And obviously there were other elements to the Cod War, like the very un-cold actually fighting. But when we hear Cold War Historical fiction we think ‘spies’. To be fair, when we were putting together our collection of historical fiction set during the Cold War, it does seem that the authors and publishers of the world tended to agree with us.
*And obviously the things these spies got up to in the real world were very ‘uncool’ to say the least. But fictional spies, those are victimless crimes.