Book Review -- Intelligence: A Story of the CIA by Susan Hasler

This is a spy novel unlike any other spy novel. It's full of dark humor and haunting surrealism. In fact, it's so surreal that it goes all the way around and comes back to reality. Reading it, you just know that, although the names have been changed to protect the guilty, this book really tells you what it's really like to work at the country's biggest spy agency.

Maddie James works at that spy agency. In a cube farm known as "the Mines." She's not a spy, she's an analyst. One of the people that sift through mountains of information for puzzle pieces that, even though they don't fit well together, show a picture of what is about to happen. She's dis-heartened, dis-enchanted and dis-interested in her job and her career. She (and the rest of the agency) failed to stop "the Strikes" (planes that crashed into the twin towers, the Pentagon and the ground a few years ago). Now, she's deathly afraid that she'll fail to stop some other disaster from occurring. She's afraid to sleep at night because she dreams of disasters and is unable to stop them. She's afraid to be awake because she knows disasters are lurking just around the corner and she'll be unable to stop them.

But, she has to work against both the terrorists who are plotting new mayhem but also her boss and the politicians who all have their own agendas.

Through the lens of Maddie's struggles, both past and present, we learn more about how the intelligence business strives to protect our country while being pulled in many directions by bureaucrats and politicians. Real truth is often sacrificed to find a palatable truth, the truth that "the President wants to hear."

Maddie and a group of sometimes lovable, sometimes distasteful colleagues are hot on the trail of a new group of terrorists with an unknown plan to attack in an unknown city. The trail leads through many twists and turns. And it constantly leaves the reader wondering "how, with all the obstacles in its way, does the CIA ever get anything done right?"

The first half of the story is darkly humorous and engaging. The second half is a fast-paced, engaging thriller. Together they make for a fascinating read.

Intelligence: A Story of the CIA
Susan Hasler
ISBN 978-0-312-57603-5