Using Life Experiences To Craft an Authentic Spy Novel

Though I’m a debut author with my first novel—a spy thriller coming out the end of March—I’ve been writing the book in my head for years. You see, I’m a former CIA targeting officer with first-hand knowledge in the recruitment and handling of spies and the dismantling of terrorist networks abroad. I adore thrillers and spy novels. But none of the books I have read and loved have come close to telling what it was really like for a woman working at the CIA.

(Writing a Police Procedurals Novel)

So, when I set out to write a spy thriller, I wanted to change the narrative. I wanted to highlight the critical role women have been playing in counterterrorism operations since 9/11. I sought to reveal the mind-blowing truths about women in espionage and write the novel that I had always wanted to read.

Counterterrorism operations is a challenging business no matter who’s doing it. You’re required to operate in foreign lands, understand and navigate different cultures, act comfortably in the presence of people that you often cannot relate to, to stop the next terrorist attack. For a woman this job is particularly challenging. We must endure all the same moral dilemmas in espionage that men encounter, manipulate people into providing intelligence, promise safety when you know that it’s likely you won’t be able to follow through.

Although as a female intelligence officer, you are also constantly fighting against the stereotype that women are there as a type of "honeytrap," offering sex in exchange for secrets. I repeatedly encountered this prejudice from Arab sources and detainees whose only exposure to female CIA officers was through Hollywood’s portrayal of them in television and film. Given the vast cultural differences between the United States and the Middle East, this wasn’t shocking.

While in the CIA’s counterterrorism division I worked mostly in the Middle East. There, I was shocked and amazed by the resiliency of Arab women after surviving decades of civil war and unrest. After generations of discrimination, they still refuse to be victimized. I wanted to showcase these brave women and their badassery in my novel.

And so, I remembered and started to write. I let these strong women develop on the page, depicting not just a daring American female intelligence officer, but a powerful Arab woman as well. Writing about these women brought back some of my most visceral moments as an intelligence officer, recalling the sensations I felt during my various assignments.

In 2008, I was on a temporary duty assignment at one of the CIA’s Bases in the Middle East. I knew that in this Middle Eastern country that the view of women was more secular than in other Arab countries, but as I sat there at a dinner table full of Iraqi men and a few of my male counterparts from the CIA Base, I felt very far from home. I thought that there would be at least one other female in the restaurant, possibly wearing a hijab, the head covering worn by some Muslim women in public. But I was alone. The only woman in the room, probably within a four-block radius.

Sitting at the Middle Eastern restaurant, I cut into my chicken and found that it was raw. . So, I cut around the raw parts of the meat and prayed that I would not end up with salmonella.

The silence around me was deafening. No one dared to speak to me or meet my eyes, so I decided to strike up a conversation with the Arabic translator next to me. I knew that he was recently engaged, and I congratulated him. He responded, “What is the reason for this congratulations? Men are for pleasure; women are for making children.”

Laughter rippled down the table and I felt the anger rising in my face, heating it. To prevent myself from reacting, I decided to excuse myself for a trip to the restroom. Heart-pounding, I nodded at my bodyguard, and we stood to make our way toward the back of the restaurant. Not only did I feel as though I was navigating a world vastly different from my own, but as an uncovered and uncensored female, I felt particularly scrutinized and vulnerable as I was clearly attending a "boys only" party.

These are the intense feelings I conjured up and infused into my novel.

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While on assignment in the Middle East, as one of the CIA’s experts on a Sunni extremist group, I participated in detainee debriefings with the foreign intelligence service to discover the location of extremist leaders who were planning the next terrorist attack

Although these debriefings were considered a success, I was later criticized by my male managers back at Langley for being "too aggressive" in the questions I posed during the debriefings. While my male counterparts who had asked the same type of questions, did not endure that same level of criticism.

Though my goal in writing my debut spy thriller, The Syndicate Spy, was to write a page-turning thriller that would entertain, I always wanted to reveal certain truths about espionage and inform readers about the role women have always played in intelligence operations.

Women have been playing a critical role in counterterrorism operations since 9/11, yet their stories are just slowly beginning to surface. They are as well-trained and efficient in the recruitment and handling of spies as their male counterparts, yet many thrillers and Hollywood films continue to portray them differently.

For the last 30 years, female spies have had to overcome more prejudices and endure more criticism than their male counterparts, especially when working in the Arab world. And despite these obstacles, female CIA officers continue to prove their proficiency in the recruitment and handling of spies as well as gathering intelligence to disrupt and defeat terrorist groups.

My hope is that by digging into my own past while at the CIA, I succeeded in creating real female characters that leap off the page—characters that might change the way readers see females in intelligence—and make readers anxious to read the next installment.

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