Jonna began her work at the CIA as a ‘career wife,’ supporting her husband’s job, but soon she started taking on bigger and important roles in the agency, for which she lived all over the world and eventually rose to the position of Chief of Disguise.
Having read plenty about the CIA’s origins as the OG old boy’s club in which a lot of men threw ideas at a wall and hoped they’d stick during World War 2, this book was interesting to me for covering its evolution into something more closely resembling the agency as it is today, as well as for Mendez’s experiences as a trailblazing woman in a highly sexist industry.
I enjoyed learning about how Mendez got into this work and slowly rose through the ranks of the agency. She goes into detail about the kind of work she had to do as a tech, including creating disguises and figuring out improved ways to acquire and smuggle classified photographs. We also learn plenty about the training that she had to undergo to advance her career, some interesting incidents or cases she worked on, and her experiences living and traveling abroad in both European and Asian cities.
However, I did feel that the writing was shallow in parts. We learn a lot about Mendez’s experiences with sexism in the CIA, but other subjects – the moral complexities of the work she does, the effects of the high-stress lifestyle on her marriage, and having to cut off most of her family and friends and dedicate her life to the agency – are only lightly touched upon, which is a shame because I think it would have been fascinating to dig into the difficulties of such a lifestyle and how she managed it.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.
