Intelligence: A Novel Of The CIA (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
I really enjoyed Susan Hasler's book. Any close look at the cover that shows the eagle on the CIA seal with rabbit ears should give even the densest reader a clear indication that it is a riff--partly good natured and partly bitter.The strength of the novel is not so much its plot. It is merely a fictional retelling of how intelligence can be distorted to advance a policy end.For me what I really liked were her characters. I am not usually a fan of novels with character portraits but this was an exception. Although somewhat exaggerated to match the humor, there were elements in all that shows they were real people. At times, Ms. Hasler used an expression that had me laughing out loud. Author Susan Hasler spent 21 years working for the CIA and knows what it is like to toil in an intelligence agency. I was keen to read this book, hoping for a good thriller that also paints a realistic picture of what life is like at the nation's best-known spy agency. The writing in Intelligence is a bit self-consciously "cute", but I might have been able to tolerate that in an otherwise enjoyable book. However, Ms.Hasler was clearly presenting such an inaccurate picture of CIA employees that she lost all credibility; I lost interest and stopped reading. I simply cannot believe that a CIA employee would call a co-worker at home and reveal the obviously classified intelligence item she has just discovered and wants to discuss with him when he gets to work, as Fran does in Chapter 15. If she had, Doc would have shushed her immediately. Later an employee's husband, who does not work at the CIA, knows more about what she is doing than she would be allowed to reveal. Ms.Hasler knows better, and my feeling is that if she cannot present such obvious details accurately, the rest of her story will be TOO MUCH fiction to be of interest. If you are going to tout your credentials as an insider when writing fiction, you owe it to your audience to present the environment you are writing about as accurately as possible. I was very disappointed.If you would like to read a more plausible thriller about the inside of an intelligence agency written by someone who knows that agency, I'd recommend instead Betsy Harrigan's 9800 Savage Road, in which a murder takes place inside the super-secret National Security Agency.
What do You think about Intelligence: A Novel Of The CIA (2010)?
A refreshingly funny tale of life in the U.S. Intelligence business.
—inanotherworld
