WESTBROOK – The world of spy thrillers is dominated by male characters from James Bond to Jason Bourne to Jack Ryan, and their creators are also predominantly male.

But Gayle Lynds, like any good writer, got into writing fiction by taking her inspiration and running with it, and the idea that she might be seen as an invader in a man’s world never really occurred to her.

“I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to do it,” she said.

She hasn’t stopped. Since beginning her career as a best-selling espionage thriller writer, she has published nine novels, including “The Last Spymaster” in 2006, a book that earned her the nickname, “Queen of Espionage.” Just last year, she published “The Book of Spies,” the first in a series featuring recurring characters. She also co-authored several books with the late author Robert Ludlum.

Lynds also now calls Westbrook home. She moved to the city last year after marrying John Sheldon, a semi-retired attorney. She is new to Maine, she said, but already she has fallen in love.

“It’s like Main Street, U.S.A.,” she said.

Residents can meet their nationally known author on Thursday, Aug. 23, when Lunds will give a talk and reading at Walker Memorial Library about her connections with the CIA.

Lynds lives in the northern part of town, on a 141?2-acre property full of trees, which she calls “a real piece of heaven.”

Lynds has lived in small towns and big cities, and said she knew of Maine’s reputation as a wonderful place to escape from the madness of hectic urban life.

“If you need to get out of the city and chill out, you go to Maine,” she said.

Once she arrived, Lynds said she understood why people think that of Maine, but it wasn’t just the trees and the hills. The people of Westbrook, she said, have been welcoming and kind.

“It’s the civility of the people,” she said.

For her books, Lynds said, she often draws on her experiences as an editor at GE-TEMPO, a now-defunct, California-based government think-tank, where she had top-secret security clearance.

“It was alternatively boring and exciting,” she said.

With the Cold War over, Lynds said, the world of espionage has changed. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, she said, 50 percent of CIA employees are new hires, and the agency often offers work to outsiders on a contract basis.

“A lot of the institutional memory is gone,” she said. “I think they’ve made it harder on themselves.”

Born in Nebraska, Lynds grew up in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and earned a journalism degree in the late 1960s from the University of Iowa, but she has always loved fiction.

“I grew up with books, and all I ever wanted to do was write novels,” she said.

She traveled with her first husband to Phoenix, and later Santa Barbara, Calif., working first as a newspaper reporter and then for the government research firm. Eventually, she divorced and remarried another author, Dennis Lynds, who wrote under the pen name Michael Collins. He died in 2005.

By the 1980s, Lynds said, she was beginning to indulge her inner author, writing literary short stories, and becoming one of many contributors to the Nick Carter pulp detective novel series.

But it was the 1990s when Lynds began writing the espionage stories that would bring her best-seller status. She began with “Masquerade,” the story of an assassin traveling abroad with a family at home, published in 1996. She based it on a CIA program she heard about once that studied the effects of long-term undercover life on the psyches of CIA operatives.

Other books followed, and she began amassing a fan base, including Robert Ludlum himself, who is best known for books featuring the Jason Bourne character. Lynds said Ludlum had read her work, and one day Lynds’ agent told her that Ludlum wanted to co-write a series of books with her.

“I really admired him, and I thought it would be a great opportunity,” she said.

Ludlum himself was suffering at the time from congestive heart failure, and was unable to work directly with Lynds, but he sent her a concept, little more than a basic idea for a story on two typed, single-spaced pages. Ludlum had tried unsuccessfully to sell it to film and television producers, Lynds said.

“That’s what he gave me as a basis for the series,” she said.

Lynds took the idea and ran, creating a series of books centered on Covert-One, a fictitious secret U.S. agency made up of political and technical experts who fight corruption and conspiracy. Lynds wrote three books in the series, which has continued on under several other authors.

Her most recent novel, “The Book of Spies,” introduces Judd Ryder, a retired military intelligence operative, and Eva Blake, a new CIA recruit who used to be an art historian. Lynds said she expects the characters to come back in an ongoing series.

“It’s interesting to play them off each other,” she said.

Lynds said she doesn’t pay much attention to what the espionage genre is “supposed” to be. For her, it’s not about writing stories about spies -– it’s about writing stories about compelling characters who also happen to be spies. Sticking to this formula, she said, helps her avoid cliche?s in the genre, and helps keep her from repeating herself.

“I’m trying to make them as realistic as I can,” she said of her characters. “Stereotypes don’t live and breathe. Characters breathe. I really strive to be fresh in every book.”

Westbrook resident Gayle Lynds, a writer who specializes in espionage thrillers, will talk next week at Walker Memorial Library. (Courtesy photo)