Spy Dust Two Masters of Disguise Reveal the Tools and Operations That Helped Win the Cold War
Retired CIA disguise expert Antonio Mendez (The Master of Disguise) teams up with his wife, also a former agent, to reveal how they fell in love during a highly critical mission in the waning years of the Cold War. Antonio and Jonna shift back and forth in their account as separate assignments eventually converge in the extrication from Moscow of a high-ranking KGB mole, jeopardized by the traitorous dealings of men like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. Fans of Alan Furst’s WWII espionage novels will appreciate the subdued nature of this thriller, where the stakes are always high but the individual actions are usually low-key, as well as the details the Mendezes provide on the art of eluding surveillance. The title is a red herring although “spy dust” was a real element of the KGB’s operations against foreigners in Moscow, its role in this story is of a background nature. The climax hinges on a much more old-fashioned game of cat and mouse. There are a few weak spots in the narrative, where the authors (or their collaborator, true-crime scribe Henderson) try to recreate scenes at which they weren’t present, but for the most part this is an entertaining thriller with the added virtue of being true. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Set my career path…
I love this book! When I was a sophomore in college I took a class called Strategic Intelligence in American Democracy. I found it so fascinating that I asked my teacher to suggest some outside reading I could do, and the first book he mentioned was this one. After reading the whole book in less than a week I realized that this was definately something I would like to study further and perhaps even be a part of some day. I’m now about to finish my masters in National Security and Intelligence — something I very well may not have done if my teacher hadn’t suggested this book to me!
4 Stars Pulling the curtain back just a little…
This book, by Antonio Mendez and his wife Jonna, is an intriguing memoir of two CIA employees at work during the closing years of the Cold War. Like most Cold War memoirs and histories, Spy Dust offers an insight into a small portion of the overall struggle between the USA and the USSR. As loyal CIA retirees, they don’t really allow us to see all that much, but by pulling the curtain back just a little, the insight is fascinating.
The book reads more like a spy novel than a non fiction book, and the parallels made me wonder how much in current spy fiction is actually fact. I have heard others say that the truth would actually be stranger than fiction, and this book makes me believe that that statement is actually true.
One statement that I found particularly telling was at a conference after the end of the Cold War where the current and past CIA Directors shared the podium with the former KGB Director of Foreign Counterintelligence, General Oleg Kalugin. In scoring the success of American vs. Soviet Human Intelligence efforts, he rated the U.S. successes as five times that of the Soviets, an amazing admission from a former enemy.
I think any reader will find this book very interesting and easy to follow and enjoy.
5 Stars Spy Dust: Two Masters of Disguise Reveal the Tools and Operations That Helped Win the Cold War
I have always been interested and very intrigued with our CIA and really learned a lot about the Agency by reading this book. Tony really has a gift of putting words together to really make you keep reading. I found both their lives very interesting and wish I could have did what they did. It certainly takes a lot of courage. And of course the job of a CIA agent is also very exciting. The bottom line being, keeping our country safe and free. God bless all the men and women risking their lives for our blessed country. And God bless America
5 Stars An Extraordinary Tale of a Legendary CIA Duo
While reality is sometimes said to be stranger than fiction, leave it to CIA veterans Tony and Jonna Mendez to create a memoir of their overseas adventures that truly boggles the mind. Whether breaking into a Soviet installation to steal a code machine, exfiltrating a pair of agents out of Moscow with the help of a CIA “ninja,” or inventing new methods of throwing off KGB surveillance, this dynamic duo still found time for love while performing their duties in a demanding career that leaves little personal time. It couldn’t have happened to two better people.
With so many autobiographies out there by ex-CIA operations officers, “Spy Dust” offers a distinct perspective on Cold War espionage history in that it was written by a husband-and-wife team of disguise artists, thus giving it that playful, creative flavor that makes this book all the more appealing. Even the title of the book is a play on words, if you think about it.
5 Stars GOOD read
I totally enjoyed this book. If you like stories about clandestine operations, you will love this one. Just enough background description, a small amount of romance and good descriptions of undercover ops.
I only wish they would have been able to tell some of the things that are still classified. Sometimes I had to ‘read between the lines’ in order to figure out what was REALLY going on.
Read it. You will like it!
You must log in to post a comment.