Matthew Dunn's debut, Spycatcher, introduces tough, resourceful MI6 agent Will Cochrane.

What was your professional life before you wrote Spycatcher?

Upon graduating from university, I had the option of going to Cambridge University to do a Ph.D. in political sciences. Simultaneously, MI6 tapped me on the shoulder. The latter career possibility was irresistible, and I subsequently spent five years as an intelligence field operative, traveling the world, combating rogue states. I left MI6 in 2001 because I got married and wanted to start a family, working within financial services in the City of London and Dubai, where I ultimately became a CEO. After divorce, I returned to the U.K. two years ago to write and look after my two children.

Are there elements of Matthew Dunn in Will Cochrane?

His childhood is different to mine. But yes, there are similarities. That said, I'm not sure how he'd cope with being a single dad, though maybe he'd just get on with it.

Will is subject to some serious physical damage. Is any of this autobiographical?

Like him, I've got plenty of physical scars. Unlike him, I've not been shot in Central Park.

When did you decide that writing spy books was something you wanted to do?

When I was a child, I was a voracious reader. I loved seafaring tales and adventures about spies and bomb-carrying anarchists in Europe. I had fire in my belly, and these books helped fuel it. For a school project, I wrote my first spy novella when I was 11 years old. Reading and writing has always been in my blood, but I've only recently had the inclination and opportunity to write for a living. I chose to write spy novels because, though fictionalized, I wanted my readers to know how it can feel being an intelligence field operative.

Has the shift to writing full time been difficult?

It's been easy. I'm a very private man, and writing gives me the solitude I enjoy. Writing and spying are both lonely and precarious vocations, wherein you're never quite sure if you're doing the right thing.

What's next for Will?

I've just finished writing my second novel. He goes to Eastern Europe and Russia to try to stop a war between the U.S. and Russia.

Have you ever thought about a nonfiction account of your career?

No. Such a book would have to be so heavily edited by MI6 (which has to clear my fiction, but thankfully hasn't made any deletions) that the result would be an unsatisfactory read. More important, I will never betray secrets about the Western intelligence community. If I did so, people would die.