This Spying Life is best described as a cross between Brick and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Students at two different colleges are engaged in a prolonged espionage war with each other, trying to give their schools the upper hand in procuring state funding, athletics, and general prestige. The focus lies on one side of the war, at Eliot Ness College, where the two leaders of the school's 'intelligence agency' (the ENIA) are forced to recalculate their strategic environment when a 'defector' transfers from Mohler University, the opposing school, and asks to join the agency. Combining a spy thriller and a love story, with comic elements and a running commentary on college life, This Spying Life has something for everyone.