The spy in the shadows

A phone call in the middle of the night cuts through the quiet, unsuspecting European streets. At one end of the line – a veteran Mossad Agent on an undercover assignment as a diplomat in Paris. At the other end – the Mossad’s deputy director, with the only news the Agent was not prepared to receive: “The daughter of the head of the Mossad is on a class trip to Poland. Last night, she went missing.”

So reads the blurb for the "gripping espionage novel" (not my words) by Orna Sandler Klein, who worked for the Mossad. As one review puts it, This is an excellent book that describes in vivid detail the nature of complex Mossad operations in foreign countries. As opposed to most books on Mossad, it is not filled with James Bondian acts of derring-do and violence but rather reveals the complex planning of operations, the tradecraft involved, and the toll that the intelligence profession exacts on its practitioners. Its portrayal rings with the accuracy that comes from the author's years in the Mossad.

So how could I resist reading this book? Unfortunately, my experience of reading did not really match the 5 star reviews posted at Amazon. For starters, the daughter of the head of the Mossad only goes missing half way through the book; until then, we are treated to reading about the peripatetic lifestyle of the nameless narrator, a woman living in Paris with her young family. One day she travels to Brussels, another day to Amsterdam, a third day to Rome ... all the time liaising with the agents that she supports.

Apparently I have a different standard for a good spy book. I come from the 'stale beer' school of John Le Carré and know how complex planning reads; I didn't see too much evidence of that here. Apart from anything else, the writing itself was confusing: plenty of paragraphs begin with "He" or "She", but it's not clear at first who these people are. It wouldn't have hurt to use the characters' names when switching point of view.

I agree that this book describes 'the toll that the intelligence profession exacts on its practitioners', but this could have been included in a more interesting story. 

There is a hint of the pagers affair, where one character is described as a businessman hoping to sell computers to some enemy organisation; now that's planning. But the rest - including the operation to save No'a, the missing/abducted girl - just happens, one day at a time. In other words, the planning here is tactical, not strategic.

This would appear to be Sandler Klein's only available book, so I can't compare it to any of her other works. I can't recommend this book to anybody and I doubt whether I'll even bother to read it again.

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
325	13/01/2011	Mirror mirror on the wall	Personal
442	13/01/2012	Caught in a musical timeweb	10cc, City Boy
533	13/01/2013	Embedding pictures in HTML emails	Programming, Delphi, Email
798	13/01/2015	Split questionnaire design	DBA
914	13/01/2016	Reviving the research	DBA
1461	13/01/2022	Desiccated apple slices	Cooking, Ninja grill
1573	13/01/2023	Israeli democracy nightmares	Israel
1707	13/01/2024	Bish-a-lu-la 2	Cooking, Kibbutz, Slow cooker