CIA satirical novel

[nancylebov]

Intelligence by Susan Hasler is a hybrid bitter insider's look at being an analyst at the CIA and a romantic comedy.

Maddy is shell-shocked from not having the resources or trust to pursue leads that warned of 9/11, and now there are hints that a new major terrorist attack is getting developed. Furthermore , her horrible narcissistic mother has moved in with her and is driving her crazy.

The office politics are extremely plausible. The viewpoint of a terrorist not so much, and I have a tentative theory about why. The thing is, we get told about his miserable background and his ideological motivations (credit goes to the author for not including 72 virgins), but it seems generic. My experience is that people have something of a personal relationship with their ideologies-- they know who's influenced them and even if they're not involved in faction fights, they at least know more about the divisions than any but the most dedicated outsiders have ever heard of. All of that is missing.

The gender stuff is interesting, and I'm curious about what you guys think of this bit: All hell has broken loose in a way that involves the death of some children (I'm not calling this a spoiler-- anything resembling a normal novel which has an imminent terrorist attack will have a terrorist attack), and the female analysts are full of shock, horror, and rage. One of the male analysts is humming the Andy Griffith theme song, and a woman asks him how he can be happy. (From memory)--he says "This is the great war of my generation, and this is the front line. How can I want to be anywhere else?".

On the whole, I liked the book with a couple of caveats. All the fat characters are obnoxious. As might be expected, there is a coercive interrogation which is of a hateworthy person, produces reliable information, and has no unwanted side effects.

Comments

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

What this brings up from my own experience is considerably different, and yet feels somehow relevant. Quoting now from an f-locked post in which I quoted, by permission, a letter my dear dunkelpig wrote to her friends:

We drove Daughter to a friend's house in NYC on Thursday. ...

The car's rear driver's side tire blew out suddenly and completely on I-95 in Philadelphia, just about the same place, but on the opposite side of the highway, that [Dunkelpig's friend]'s car died on our way home from NYC last month. I got the car to the side of the highway, then up a nearby exit ramp to a shoulder area in front of a stop sign, where thnidu could change to the compact spare, which Jim, our mechanic, had made sure was fully inflated a couple of weeks ago. All of us sometime complain about thnidu singing constantly, and Daughter has been irritated by his swearing at his computer (I tell him to switch from Windows to Mac. It markedly improves one's life).

So Daughter was rather bemused when thnidu, lying on the side of the road in 95 degree heat, efficiently changed the tire in 15 minutes, while explaining to her what he was doing, and singing "Sit Down You're Rockin' the Boat". He only fusses about minor inconveniences; serious problems have to be dealt with calmly and efficiently.

Of course there's a world of difference between a terrorist attack that kills innocents including children, and an accidental car breakdown that could have been calamitous and dangerous, even deadly, but wasn't. But I see something similar in that analyst's delighted absorption in doing his task, and mine in doing mine.