Blowing My Cover. My Life as a CIA Spy by Lindsay Moran

It is that time of the year when the time has come to plan some few weeks of work and then get some rest with a book or two. The perks of a freelancer work is that there could be some reward of working almost without a break weeks and months in a row: offering yourself some free reading time. 

And when my mind is too busy to keep following fictional events, my only choice is to delve into the world of nonfiction. Memoirs do me good, spy memoirs, even better, as it suits my interest for crime and political thrillers. 

Blowing  My Cover. My Life as a CIA Spy by Lindsay Moran is a story of falling out of professional love. A teacher of English in Bulgaria, she wanted to do something ´good´ for her country she expected the CIA to be the ideal place to do it. 

Chronologically, the book goes through the difficult recruitment part, the even more challenging training and the ways in which this patriotic decision influenced her family and personal relationships. The ´I work for the government stamp´ may deter and destroy friendships, although from outside it can be an enviable job description. But the memoir is not at all pesimistic or dramatic, and has so  many funny and rebelious moments demonstrating that being a spy may be also fun.

Based in Skopje in the nowadays North Macedonia, a new country confronted with an armed conflict, while struggling to create a network of informers she experienced the loneliness for not receiving enough professional feedback and support. The quantity - the more informer the better - versus quality ratio was shockingly put into question by 9/11 and the following events, including in N. Macedonia. 

My first trip overseas was shortly after 9/11, was in N. Macedonia, part of an OSCE field mission for journalists, and I remember the Bible ladies she mentions in the book. The world changed without a warning and the intelligence agencies, mostly CIA, failed to get the right memo. In the craziness that followed, those ladies were really the announcers of the end of an era. It will continue with the war in Iraq, that Moran did not support, bringing her one step further from leaving the Agency for good, which eventually happened.

Tenderly, she is sparkling her story with personal details, regrets and love stories broken for a cause, but also about a happy personal ending, as she was still able to have her own family and build a life outside the CIA. 

Expectedly, this memoir may have go through a careful facts and figures check by the Agency but nevertheless it does maintain a strong layer of credibility and relevance.

Blowing My Cover. My Life as a CIA Spy is a recommended read if you are interested in real spy stories, but also in some before and after 9/11 US intelligence tracks. The humour spices up the story good enough to guarantee also some amusement and pure reading pleasure.

Rating: 3.5 stars