Cloak & Lager: Denver Espionage Book Club

When I said this book club would feature an eclectic mix of spy media, I meant it. Expand your horizons, even if, like me, a YA historical spy romance with fantasy elements is far from your go-to. Does a book like this retain any of the feel of a traditional spy novel? Will it drive the historical pedants up a wall? Let’s find out and review together!

(This book is a part of an anthology series but I am only interested in this one book. Its length is appropriate for one session only because I anticipate a YA novel will not be particularly dense.)

Foul Lady Fortune by Chloe Gong
528 pp.

Summary:

It’s 1931 in Shanghai, and the stage is set for a new decade of intrigue.

Four years ago, Rosalind Lang was brought back from the brink of death, but the strange experiment that saved her also stopped her from sleeping and aging—and allows her to heal from any wound. In short, Rosalind cannot die. Now, desperate for redemption for her traitorous past, she uses her abilities as an assassin for her country.

Code name: Fortune.

But when the Japanese Imperial Army begins its invasion march, Rosalind’s mission pivots. A series of murders is causing unrest in Shanghai, and the Japanese are under suspicion. Rosalind’s new orders are to infiltrate foreign society and identify the culprits behind the terror plot before more of her people are killed.

To reduce suspicion, however, she must pose as the wife of another Nationalist spy, Orion Hong, and though Rosalind finds Orion’s cavalier attitude and playboy demeanor infuriating, she is willing to work with him for the greater good. But Orion has an agenda of his own, and Rosalind has secrets that she wants to keep buried. As they both attempt to unravel the conspiracy, the two spies soon find that there are deeper and more horrifying layers to this mystery than they ever imagined.

MK-ULTRA and the man who spearheaded it, Sidney Gottlieb! Strap in because this will be another dark one. I haven’t read this one but am excited to delve into it.

Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control by Stephen Kinzer
355 pp.

Summary:

The visionary chemist Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s master magician and gentlehearted torturer—the agency’s “poisoner in chief.” As head of the MK-ULTRA mind control project, he directed brutal experiments at secret prisons on three continents. He made pills, powders, and potions that could kill or maim without a trace—including some intended for Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders. He paid prostitutes to lure clients to CIA-run bordellos, where they were secretly dosed with mind-altering drugs. His experiments spread LSD across the United States, making him a hidden godfather of the 1960s counterculture. For years he was the chief supplier of spy tools used by CIA officers around the world.

Stephen Kinzer, author of groundbreaking books about U.S. clandestine operations, draws on new documentary research and original interviews to bring to life one of the most powerful unknown Americans of the twentieth century. Gottlieb’s reckless experiments on “expendable” human subjects destroyed many lives, yet he considered himself deeply spiritual. He lived in a remote cabin without running water, meditated, and rose before dawn to milk his goats.

During his twenty-two years at the CIA, Gottlieb worked in the deepest secrecy. Only since his death has it become possible to piece together his astonishing career at the intersection of extreme science and covert action. Poisoner in Chief reveals him as a clandestine conjurer on an epic scale.

Literary spy fiction and a 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner! Obviously inspired loosely by the life of a very real North Vietnamese sleeper agent, Pham Xuan An.

(There is an HBO adaptation of this. You are welcome to watch that in addition but I’m not sure whether I will. Book is supposed to be significantly better. I want to be quite choosy about the movies/TV we discuss as I am not a real movie/TV person.)

The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen
371 pp.

Summary:

It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong.

The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.

Book about one of the most important leaker of Soviet KGB secrets ever.

Please note: this book is new-ish (published within last year) so order from the library early if you are! I have no idea how popular it’ll be, but if your library doesn’t have it Prospector likely can supply you with one within 2-3 weeks.

The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB by Gorden Corera
272 pp.

Summary:

The story of how one man—a librarian for the KGB—became a traitor to the intelligence agency, stealing the most prized Soviet-era archives and smuggling them to the West.

How do you steal a library? Not just any library but the most secret, heavily guarded archive in the world. The answer is to be a librarian. To be so quiet, that no-one knows what you are up to as you toil undercover and deep amongst the files. The work goes on for decades but remains so low key, that even after your escape, aided by MI6, no one even notices you are gone.

The Spy in the Archive tells the remarkable story of how Vasili Mitrokhin—an introverted archivist who loved nothing more than dusty archives—ended up changing the world. As the in-house archivist for the KGB, the secrets he was exposed to inside its walls turned him first into a dissident and then a spy; a traitor to his country but a man determined to expose the truth about the dark forces that had subverted Russia, forces still at work in the country today.

Historian and journalist Gordon Corera tells of the operation to extract this prized asset from Russia for the first time. It is an edge-of-the-seat thriller, with vivid flashbacks to Mitrokhin’s earlier time as a KGB idealist prepared to do what it took to serve the Soviet Union and his growing realisation that the communist state was imprisoning its own people. It is the story of what it was like to live in the Soviet Union, to raise a family there, and then of one man’s journey from the heart of the Soviet state to disillusion, betrayal, and defection.

At its heart is Mitrokhin’s determination to take on the most powerful institution in the world by revealing its darkest secrets. This is narrative nonfiction at its absolute best.