Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is a series of stealth action-adventure video games, the first of which was released in 2002, and their tie-in novels that were endorsed by Tom Clancy. The series follows Sam Fisher, a highly trained agent of a fictional black-ops sub-division within the NSA, dubbed "Third Echelon", as he overcomes his adversaries. Levels are created using Unreal Engine and emphasize light and darkness as gameplay elements. The series has been positively received, and was once considered to be one of Ubisoft's flagship franchises, selling more than 31 million copies by 2011. No further installments have been released since 2013, though a VR version and a remake of the first game have since been announced.
Sabotage, released in the United States as The Woman Alone, is a 1936 British espionage thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock starring Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka, and John Loder. It is loosely based on Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel The Secret Agent, about a woman who discovers that her husband, a London shopkeeper, is a terrorist agent.
Felix Leiter is a fictional character created by Ian Fleming in the James Bond books, films and other media. The character is an operative for the CIA and Bond's friend. After losing a leg and his hand to a shark attack, Leiter joined the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The name "Felix" comes from the middle name of Fleming's friend Ivar Bryce, while the name "Leiter" was the surname of Fleming's friend Marion Oates Leiter Charles, the then wife of Thomas Leiter.
Farewell, My Lovely is a novel by Raymond Chandler, published in 1940, the second novel he wrote featuring the Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe. It was adapted for the screen three times and was also adapted for the stage and radio.
Lapras is a Pokémon species in Nintendo and Game Freak's Pokémon franchise. Created by Ken Sugimori, Lapras first appeared in the video games Pokémon Red and Blue and subsequent sequels, later appearing in various merchandise, spinoff titles and animated and printed adaptations of the franchise. Lapras is a water-type large Pokémon that resembles a plesiosaur. Lapras was voiced by Rikako Aikawa in both the Japanese and English-language versions of the anime.
Raymond Benson is an American author best known for being the author of the James Bond novels from 1997 to 2003. Benson was born in Midland, Texas and graduated from Permian High School in Odessa in 1973. In primary school Benson took an interest in the piano which would later in his life develop into an interest in composing music, mostly for theatrical productions. Benson also took part in drama at school and became the vice president of his high school's drama department, an interest that he would later pursue by directing stage productions in New York City after attending and receiving a degree in Drama Production—Directing from the University of Texas at Austin. Other hobbies include film history and criticism, writing, and designing computer games.
James Kelman is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, playwright and essayist. His novel A Disaffection was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989. Kelman won the 1994 Booker Prize with How Late It Was, How Late. In 1998, Kelman was awarded the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award. His 2008 novel Kieron Smith, Boy won both of Scotland's principal literary awards: the Saltire Society's Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year.
Christopher Brookmyre is a Scottish novelist whose novels, generally in a crime or police procedural frame, mix comedy, politics, social comment and action with a strong narrative. He has been referred to as a Tartan Noir author. His debut novel was Quite Ugly One Morning; subsequent works have included All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye (2005), Black Widow (2016) and Bedlam (2013), which was written in parallel with the development of a first-person shooter videogame, also called Bedlam. He also writes historical fiction with his wife, Dr Marisa Haetzman, under the pseudonym Ambrose Parry.
Firebrand is a supervillain in the Marvel Comics universe. A superpowered enforcer for corrupt industrialist Justin Hammer, Firebrand is a former activist who turned to violence after believing peaceful protest produced no results.
William "Bud" Neill was a Scottish cartoonist who drew cartoon strips for a number of Glasgow-based newspapers between the 1940s and 1960s. Following his death, his work has attained cult status with a worldwide following.
The Sacred Art of Stealing is a satirical crime novel by the Scottish writer Christopher Brookmyre. It is the author's seventh book and is a stand-alone sequel to A Big Boy did it and Ran Away.
S.W.O.R.D. is a fictional criminal organization that exists as a creation within a creation. The organization appears in the novel The Saint and the Fiction Makers, written by Fleming Lee. It is credited to editor Leslie Charteris who created the title character of Simon Templar, alias "The Saint". The Fiction Makers was adapted from a two-part episode of the same title written by John Kruse from The Saint TV series. This was later recut and released in 1968 as a black-and-white movie.
Peter McDougall is a Scottish television playwright whose major success was in the 1970s.
Black Sunday is a 1977 American action thriller film directed by John Frankenheimer and based on Thomas Harris' novel of the same name. It was produced by Robert Evans, and stars Robert Shaw, Bruce Dern and Marthe Keller. It was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1978. The screenplay was written by Ernest Lehman, Kenneth Ross and Ivan Moffat. Ross had previously written the screenplay for The Day of the Jackal, a similar plot-driven political thriller. The inspiration of the story came from the Munich massacre, perpetrated by the Black September organization against Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics, giving the title for the novel and film.
Plot It Yourself is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, published by the Viking Press in 1959, and also collected in the omnibus volume Kings Full of Aces.
ELLE, also known as Él, is a Japanese adult visual novel developed by ELF Corporation which was originally released on June 13, 1991. A remake produced by ELF Corporation retitled Él was released on September 29, 2000. Green Bunny produced an anime original video animation titled Él which was released in two volumes in 2001. The series depicts the survivors of a nuclear war that are gathered in a single, tightly monitored city.
The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize is the United Kingdom's first literary award for comic literature. Established in 2000 and named in honour of P. G. Wodehouse, past winners include Paul Torday in 2007 with Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and Marina Lewycka with A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian 2005 and Jasper Fforde for The Well of Lost Plots in 2004. Gary Shteyngart was the first American winner in 2011.
Failed terrorism plots are terrorist plots that have either been foiled, uncovered by authorities or failed through mistakes.
A Snowball in Hell (2008) completes Christopher Brookmyre's suspense trilogy featuring DI Angelique de Xavia. She and her antagonist, Simon Darcourt, were introduced in A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away (2001), while she was the central character in The Sacred Art of Stealing (2002), where she met the third main character of Snowball, the magician Zal Innez. Brookmyre himself sees Snowball as a sequel to two separate books.
