An Ordinary Spy
by Joseph Weisberg
288 pages
(2008, Bloomsbury USA)

Reviews

Ain’t It Cool News
September 12, 2007
by Frank Bascombe

Is there a spy story that hasn’t been told? Can it be reinvented, should it be turned on its head and dismantled? Or is the old formula so engrained in the subconscious that it’s impossible to write something new without readers minds falling back on something they’ve read a million times, should they expect whatever is new to be new, and not what they’re used to? Sadly the old conventions are there for a reason, and this book uses the hinges of the spy business as a start but after that it’s like nothing I’ve read before.

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit it; I haven’t read EVERY spy book ever written but I’ve gotten through enough to know what’s quality and what’s groundbreaking; and ‘An Ordinary Spy’ suspiciously drifts between the two. This book is a strange solitary story, especially the confessional tone of the narrative. You feel like you’re the only one reading it, lost in this mundane world, trapped in a room with a co-worker you don’t hate or like, but listen to because like him you’re someone who has to go to work.

Written as a memoir that’s been submitted to the CIA for vetting and they go through it with their black magic marker and black out forty percent of the book. Really, that’s what it is. You’ve seen those declassified documents on the news where the letterhead reads CIA and then there are these long breaks in the paragraphs, between sentences where black bars replace the words, and the sentence reads, The Minister of (black bar) negotiated a shipping contract between (black bar) and (black bar) culminating in the hiring of seven hundred (black bar) nationals which revitalized the economic growth of (black bar).

So Mark Ruttenberg drifts through the CIA as the story begins, (full of black bars) and gets sent out to (black bar)(which leaves you guessing where it is he might be stationed and who he’s recruiting, a great, great device as it turns out). While there he hears about another disgraced agent named Bobby Goldstein who worked in (black bar) before him and recruited the wrong (black bar) before getting retired. Then Mark recruits a woman of questionable origins and subverted ethics while bedding her endlessly, not a good way to start a career at the CIA. He’s sent back home to Washington before he can say "I think this is getting serious." He’s fired from the CIA, and is pushed out to find Bobby who is living somewhere on the East Coast. Mark tells the story like I would tell you about the year I lived in the South of France; candidly, with gallows humor and heavy on the mundane details. Bobby tells Mark of his fall from grace, which takes up two thirds of the book and Mark tells this story to us after Bobby tells it to him.

Intrigued? I was floored by how good this book was, start to finish, the brilliantly dry narrative and the intimate nature I felt while reading this came across to me in waves. This is a procedural story about being an employee of the CIA. Cars don’t blow up; there are no high speed chases, or scantily clad vixens with ulterior motives who eventually warm up to our hero only to be whacked in the final act to atone for their sins. This book doesn’t come out until 2008 but it’s something you can safely pre-order via your preferred vendor and be stunned with joy when it arrives.