Shadow Cell: An Insider Account of America’s New Spy War

Husband-and-wife CIA operatives Andrew and Jihi Bustamante deliver a hair-raising account of their years building an unlikely spy cell for a major intelligence mission. The Bustamentes met as CIA trainees and married in their late 20s. Much of the narrative revolves around a heavily redacted operation (city, country, and target names are all obscured) in which a CIA intelligence network operating within the borders of a U.S. adversary was compromised by a mole. The Bustamentes were tasked by their handlers with assembling their own team of operatives to ferret out the traitor and gather new, clean intelligence. Between heart-pounding accounts of high-stakes backgammon games and contrived playdates between the children of their colleagues and their targets, the Bustamentes offer an alluring crash-course on spycraft from assessing suspicious actors to shaking off “minders” assigned to surveil one’s every move. Though even the Bustamantes don’t know the consequences of some of their work, the authors pack in plenty of suspense, providing the cliffhangers and paranoid atmosphere of a John le Carré novel. It’s hard not to yearn for a less censored account, but there’s enough here to satisfy fans of espionage fiction. Agent: Rick Richter, Aevitas Creative Management. (Sept.)