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WORK TITLE: The Biker’s Brother
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1956
WEBSITE: https://peteredwardsauthor.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Canadian
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1956; son of Kenneth and Winona Edwards.
EDUCATION:Western University, B.A. (with honors), master’s degree in journalism.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author and journalist. Toronto Star, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, organized crime beat reporter; also worked for newspapers in Woodstock, Ontario, London, Ontario, Vancouver, British Columbia, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Whitehorse, Yukon, and Regina, Saskatchewan. Executive producer, Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto’s Last War, New Metric Media.
AWARDS:Received awards from Orillia chapter, Amnesty International, Saskatchewan Reporters Association, and Ontario Reporters Association.
WRITINGS
Books have been translated into French and German.
Business or Blood was filmed by New Metric Media as a six-part series and marketed internationally by Sky Vision.
SIDELIGHTS
Peter Edwards is a crime beat reporter for the Toronto Star who has written numerous books on the subject of organized crime in Canada. “His books on organized crime have been translated into French and German and published across North America and the United Kingdom,” declared the contributor of a biographical blurb to the author’s eponymous home page, the Peter Edwards Website. “Edwards has been interviewed about organized crime for the BBC, CBC, CTV, CBS.com, and the Mob Stories series for History Television and frequently lectures on organized crime and journalism at several universities and colleges.” Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto’s Last War, his book on the longtime head of the Sicilian Mafia in Montréal, which he cowrote with university professor and Mafia expert Antonio Nicaso, was adapted for television as a miniseries. In The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime: From Captain Kidd to Mom Boucher, Edwards and coauthor Michel Auger offer a consideration of more than three hundred criminals from all eras of Canadian history, going all the way back to the seventeenth-century fur trader Pierre Radisson. Explained a reviewer for the Beaver: Exploring Canada’s History: “There’s lots of other bad’uns, too–pirates, rumrunners, kidnappers, drug-dealers, even Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, … the Sundance Kid.”
Edwards is also the author of Delusion: The True Story of Victorian Superspy Henri Le Caron, also known as Thomas Beach. Le Caron was born in England, but he came to the Americas and joined the Union army during the American Civil War. As Wesley Wark wrote in the Globe and Mail, “Le Caron’s real claim to fame, certainly for Canadian readers, is that he was Canada’s first spy and the first individual to penetrate a precursor to a modern terrorist organization. His remarkable story has been told before, but Peter Edwards … tells the story afresh, with some new details added to deepen the picture of Le Caron, if not to solve the mystery of this oddball agent…. Edwards is to be commended for bringing the Le Caron story back to life.”
The Biker’s Brother is a young-adult novel that looks at the plight of Josh Williams, a high-school football star in St. Thomas, Ontario. “His older brother, Jamie, spent time on the field in high school,” explained a Kirkus Reviews contributor, “but wound up involved with the local biker gang, the Annihilators.” Although Josh only wants to begin preparing for his upcoming senior year, stated Brittany Drehobl in School Library Journal, he is “pulled into the high-risk world of Canadian motorcycle clubs when his brother, Jamie … is jailed” as a suspect in the murder of the brother of Josh’s girlfriend Brenda. “This first-person narration by a plain-spoken, straightforwardly masculine teen,” observed Walter Hogan in Voice of Youth Advocates, “would be a good choice for reluctant male readers.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Beaver: Exploring Canada’s History, October-November, 2005, review of The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime: From Captain Kidd to Mom Boucher, p. 50.
Biography, fall, 2008, Wesley Wark, review of Delusion: The True Story of Victorian Superspy Henri Le Caron, p. 793.
Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), August 2, 2008, Wesley Wark, “How Canada’s First Spy Foiled the Dastardly Fenians.”
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2017, review of The Biker’s Brother.
Reference & Research Book News, August, 2005, review of The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime, p. 157.
School Library Journal, October, 2017, Brittany Drehobl, review of The Biker’s Brother, p. 106.
Voice of Youth Advocates, October, 2017, Walter Hogan, review of The Biker’s Brother, p. 57.
ONLINE
Peter Edwards Website, https://peteredwardsauthor.com (June 22, 2018), author profile.
Biography
“Peter Edwards knows how the real bad guys eat, sleep and breathe, and on the page brings them to life – even the dead ones – better than any other true crime writer.”—Linwood Barclay, international bestselling author
Peter Edwards is the organized crime beat reporter at The Toronto Star.
He spent the first eleven years of his life in Lytton, British Columbia, a strange but happy village with no streetlights or elevators between several First Nations communities. There, his father Kenneth was the region’s only doctor, sometimes paid with salmon speared from the Fraser River. His mother Winona was an avid, perceptive, passionate writer who pioneered the benign neglect school of child-rearing while raising their four children. His father sometimes dabbled in journalism, and once wrote in a medical journal that it’s better to have a fence at the top of a cliff than an ambulance waiting at the bottom of it. Edwards remains best-known in Lytton for winning the junior boys’ category of a baking contest with a French apple pie, in a competition marred by the disqualification of several competitors for using store-bought mixes. He plans to buy a summer home on the outskirts of Lytton immediately after winning the lottery.
There were about twice as many people (about 700) in his high school, Central Secondary in London, Ont. as in all of Lytton. He went to Western University (formerly University of Western Ontario) where he received an Hons. BA in Canadian History and a Masters degree in Journalism.
Edwards was named to the university’s Alumni Gallery of Distinction in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies. Not long after that, the university changed its name and erased all mention of the Gallery of Distinction. Edwards claims not to take this personally.
Before heading off to the work world, Edwards took a year off school to pursue his love of judo while supporting himself working in a pub in Soho, London. He was thrown, choked, arm barred and pinned by some of the best fighters in the world and still considers that year a great investment of his time.
He has since worked for newspapers in Woodstock, Ont., London, Ont., Vancouver, Saskatoon, Whitehorse and Regina before landing in Toronto. He worked as a copy editor, sports writer and briefly as an entertainment editor, before drifting into organized crime reporting. He has written for The Toronto Star for more than thirty years.
He’s the author of fifteen non-fiction books, ten of which are on organized crime. A young adult novel, The Biker’s Brother, will be published in October 2017 by Annick Press.
Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto’s Last War, which was co-written with Antonio Nicaso, was optioned by New Metric Media and developed into a six-part series, starring Anthony LaPaglia, Kim Coates and Paul Sorvino. Edwards was an executive producer and consultant on the project, which is marketed internationally by Sky Vision.
Bad Blood debuted on City and FX in September 2017. Business or Blood became a Globe and Mail and Toronto Star best-seller again after Random House re-released it that month under the title Bad Blood: The End of Honour.
Edwards was a consultant for the movie One Dead Indian, which won three Gemini Awards and was nominated for another four. He covered Ipperwash with Harold Levy of the Toronto Star for years, benefitting both from Levy’s idealism and keen sense of humour. Edwards’s coverage earned him an eagle feather from the Union of Ontario Indians and a gold medal from the Centre for Human Rights. A particularly poignant moment came when he was a pallbearer at the funeral of the late Sam George, who sacrificed his health in a tireless effort to obtain justice after his brother Dudley’s death.
Edwards has received awards from Amnesty International’s Orillia chapter, the Saskatchewan Reporters Association and the Ontario Reporters Association but still secretly smarts about the university’s Gallery of Distinction debacle. He was a member of a Toronto Star team that won a National Newspaper Award for spot news coverage and also received an honourable mention in sports-writing for a series he worked on with the late Randy Starkman.
His books on organized crime has been translated into French and German and published across North America and the United Kingdom. His book Delusion on Victorian superspy Henri Le Caron made it onto the CIA’s “Intelligence Officer’s Bookshelf” and was called a “well-documented corrective to an intriguing spy story.” Edwards has been interviewed about organized crime for the BBC, CBC, CTV, CBS.com and the Mob Stories series for History Television and frequently lectures on organized crime and journalism at several universities and colleges. He often begins his talks by paraphrasing Keith Richards and saying, “It’s great to be here. It’s great to be anywhere.”
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Print Marked Items
Edwards, Peter. The Biker's Brother
Walter Hogan
Voice of Youth Advocates.
40.4 (Oct. 2017): p57.
COPYRIGHT 2017 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
http://www.voya.com
Full Text:
3Q * 3P * J * S * R
Edwards, Peter. The Biker's Brother. Annick Press, October 2017. 256p. $18.99. 978-155451-936-1.
Seventeen-year-old Josh Williams is about to start his senior year of high school in the small city of St.
Thomas, Ontario. Although he is a clean-living football player, Josh has a connection to the local
motorcycle club and superficial acquaintance with some shady characters through his older brother, Jamie.
But when Jamie becomes a suspect in the murder of Trent Wallace, the local club's methamphetamine
"cooker," Josh uncovers more than he ever wanted to know about the sinister operations of rival drug gangs
as he searches for evidence to prove his brother's innocence. Josh's attraction to Trent's sister, Brenda,
further complicates what becomes a murder mystery, as well as a tour of the seamy side of biking culture.
Edwards, crime reporter for the Toronto Star, has written several adult-market books on organized crime,
particularly concerning motorcycle gangs. He notes that although Canada is often regarded as an almost
boringly safe country, its motorcycle gangs have a history of violence, largely generated by competition for
shares of a lucrative drug market. Here, in his first novel for young adults, Edwards presents a broad range
of believable biker characters--from peaceable older members with families to recklessly dangerous young
toughs willing to commit murder for the chance to rise in gang hierarchy. This first-person narration by a
plain-spoken, straightforwardly masculine teen would be a good choice for reluctant male readers.--Walter
Hogan.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hogan, Walter. "Edwards, Peter. The Biker's Brother." Voice of Youth Advocates, Oct. 2017, p. 57. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A511785017/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=edd178f3. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A511785017
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Edwards, Peter: THE BIKER'S
BROTHER
Kirkus Reviews.
(Sept. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Edwards, Peter THE BIKER'S BROTHER Annick Press (Children's Fiction) $9.95 10, 10 ISBN: 978-1-
55451-935-4
A biker is accused of murder. Seventeen-year-old white Josh Williams is determined to make the most of
his promising football skills. His older brother, Jamie, spent time on the field in high school but wound up
involved with the local biker gang, the Annihilators. When a national biker gang, the Popeyes, rides into
town and threatens to swallow up the Annihilators' territory, Jamie ends up accused of murdering the methcooking
brother of Josh's crush, white beauty Brenda. Josh believes his brother is innocent and investigates,
pulling at a tangled web of biker politics in search of the true killer. Josh is an engaging protagonist, and the
author builds his multifaceted personality through his interactions with authority figures, friends, and the
assorted bikers. Unfortunately that's where the characterization stops. None of the secondary characters are
given more than one or two notable characteristics. Most disappointingly, Brenda is the thinnest of them all,
introduced as "a teenage Scarlett Johansson, but a taller, leaner version," and never developed further than
that. This would be less noticeable if the shoe leather of the mystery were more satisfying to chew on, but
the author doesn't make it tasty enough. Josh stumbles on to the truth, and everything is settled on
technicality and circumstance. There's no satisfying "Eureka!" climax, and the novel just ends on an even
note. A subpar mystery buoyed by a crackling gumshoe protagonist. (Mystery. 14-17)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Edwards, Peter: THE BIKER'S BROTHER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A502192231/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=591c4a61.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A502192231
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The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized
Crime
The Beaver: Exploring Canada's History.
85.5 (October-November 2005): p50+.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Canada's National History Society
http://www.beavermagazine.ca
Full Text:
The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime. by Peter Edwards and Michel Auger. McClelland &
Stewart, Toronto, 2004. 272 pp., illus., $29.99 paper
Peace, order, and good government is the Canadian mantra, but apparently some people, many of them
Canadians, aren't chanting it, and haven't been for some time. Crime reporters Peter Edwards and Michel
Auger have managed to compile an alphabetical listing of over 300 men and women who in an organized
way have attempted to rob, cheat and sometimes kill Canadians all in the name of their own, often
pathological, self-interest. Curiously, many of them have nicknames. Of course, "spin" sometimes enters the
authors' assessments, which adds to the fun. Pierre Radisson, whose machinations led to the founding of the
Hudson's Bay Company, for example, is entered under the title "Fur Trading Double Crosser." Funny to
have him sharing pages with Vincenzo "Vic the Egg" Cotroni, head of the Montreal Mob, but "non-lawabiding"
can be a matter of historical perspective. There's lots of other bad'uns, too--pirates, rumrunners,
kidnappers, drug-dealers, even Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, better known as the Sundance Kid, who seemed
nice enough in the movie. Guaranteed to entertain and inform.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime." The Beaver: Exploring Canada's History, Oct.-Nov.
2005, p. 50+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A137499951/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c903e396. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A137499951
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Edwards, Peter. The Biker's Brother
Brittany Drehobl
School Library Journal.
63.10 (Oct. 2017): p106+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
EDWARDS, Peter. The Biker's Brother. 256p. Annick Pr. Oct. 2017. Tr $18.95. ISBN 9781554519361.
Gr 9 Up--Seventeen-year-old Josh Williams's football career is on the line the summer after a knee injury.
While he should be taking the summer building his strength at the gym, he is instead pulled into the highrisk
world of Canadian motorcycle clubs when his brother, Jamie, a member of the Annihilators, is jailed on
suspicion of murder. And not just any murder, but tire murder of Trent, the meth-cooking brother of the love
of Josh's life, Brenda. Josh and his mother don't have the funds to spring for a proper defense; dangerous
situations and deadly cover-ups infiltrate Josh's efforts to secure a lawyer and prove Jamies innocence.
While a potentially exciting murder mystery in a not-often-explored facet of rural Canadian lifestyle, this
novel falls flat. Josh and his contemporaries do not read like teens, or even as friends and love interests, but
as one-dimensional plot pawns with very little development or even purpose, including within their
relationships with each other. Adult characters often provide necessary plot advancement when convenient,
as well as explanations of rural Canadian life (such as mentioning the racist connotation of the Confederate
flag), but still don't provide much compelling purpose beyond the mystery. Flat narration leads to what
ultimately ends up to be an anticlimactic and almost too-tidy conclusion of an overall shallow look into
Canadian biker clubs. VERDICT Not recommended for purchase.--Brittany Drehobl, Morton Grove Public
Library, 1L
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Drehobl, Brittany. "Edwards, Peter. The Biker's Brother." School Library Journal, Oct. 2017, p. 106+.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A507950816/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=64f44473. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A507950816
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Le Caron, Henri (Thomas Beach):
Delusion: The True Story of a Victorian
Superspy
Wesley Wark
Biography.
31.4 (Fall 2008): p793.
COPYRIGHT 2008 University of Hawaii Press
http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/t-biography.aspx
Full Text:
Le Caron, Henri (Thomas Beach) Delusion: The True Story of a Victorian Superspy. Peter Edwards.
Toronto: Key Porter, 2008. 344 pp. $32.95.
"Le Caron's real claim to fame, certainly for Canadian readers, is that he was Canada's first spy and the first
individual to penetrate a precursor to a modern terrorist organization. His remarkable story has been told
before, but Peter Edwards, a crime reporter for the Toronto Star, tells the story afresh, with some new details
added to deepen the picture of Le Caron, if not to solve the mystery of this oddball agent."
Wesley Wark. Globe and Mail, Aug. 2, 2008: D3.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Wark, Wesley. "Le Caron, Henri (Thomas Beach): Delusion: The True Story of a Victorian Superspy."
Biography, vol. 31, no. 4, 2008, p. 793. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A192803191/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=32cc6ff7.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A192803191
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The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized
Crime: From Captain Kidd to Mom
Boucher
Reference & Research Book News.
20.3 (Aug. 2005): p157.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text:
HV6453
2004-478110
0-7710-3044-4
The encyclopedia of Canadian organized crime; from Captain Kidd to Mom Boucher.
Edwards, Peter and Michel Auger.
McClelland & Stewart, Inc., [c]2004
272 p.
$23.95 (pa)
Canadian journalists, one of whom (Auger) was shot in retaliation for his crime reporting, compile 300
illustrated entries on crime figures in their country. They trace colorful/nefarious personalities from 17th
century pirates and the Sundance Kid who once hid out in Canada, to modern drug lords, ethnic mobsters,
and imprisoned Hell's Angel leader Maurice "Mom" Boucher.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime: From Captain Kidd to Mom Boucher." Reference &
Research Book News, Aug. 2005, p. 157. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A135655551/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=de7b2701.
Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A135655551
How Canada's first spy foiled the dastardly Fenians
WESLEY WARK
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Aug. 02, 2008 12:00AM EDT
Last updated Friday, Mar. 13, 2009 10:11AM EDT
DELUSION
The True Story of a Victorian Superspy
By Peter Edwards
Key Porter, 344 pages, $32.95
Henri Le Caron (a.k.a Thomas Beach) had all the makings of a spy. He had an alias, a curious accent, an adventurous past, a thirst for money and maybe even a cause. He had the look: intense gaze, compact body, the air of someone who, if you met him in a dark alley, you might sidle away from as a possible psychopath.
Le Caron's problem was that he spied in an age when spies enjoyed none of the trappings of popular-culture glamour, had none of the backstop of professional intelligence services, were commonly regarded as lowlifes and traitors, and faced vigilante justice if caught in the act. Le Caron's world was an extremely dangerous one. That he survived as a spy for 20-plus years is worthy of The Guinness Book of Records.
But Le Caron's real claim to fame, certainly for Canadian readers, is that he was Canada's first spy and the first individual to penetrate a precursor to a modern terrorist organization. His remarkable story has been told before, but Peter Edwards, a crime reporter for the Toronto Star, tells the story afresh, with some new details added to deepen the picture of Le Caron, if not to solve the mystery of this oddball agent.
Le Caron became a spy by accident. He was a wayward soul and a bit of a misfit, who escaped his family and life in the British army town of Colchester, fled to Paris, equipped himself with a French accent and partial mastery of the language and then, at the ripe age of 15, smelled adventure when the American Civil War broke out. He crossed the ocean on a whim, enlisted in the Union Army (always hungry for recruits), won a promotion from boy bugler to second lieutenant, and even found himself in command of black troops, operating against Confederate guerrilla bands in Alabama and Tennessee.
This was a dirty war that seems to have hardened the young adventurer for manhood - and whatever fate brought his way next.
What fate brought was a call to espionage on behalf of, first, Britain, and then the newly minted Dominion of Canada. After the end of the Civil War, Le Caron fell in with Irish-Americans who had come together in a garrulous conspiracy known as the Fenian movement. Under its first military leader, General John O'Neill, a man of big plans and negligible accomplishments, the Fenian movement came up with the notion of arming ex-Civil War veterans from the Irish-American community, storming a defenceless Canada and - wait for it - holding it for ransom in exchange for a free Ireland.
Le Caron spelled out his distaste for the Fenian conspirators in letters to his father, who passed them on to government officials in London. Miraculously, his potential as what Graham Greene would call "a confidential agent" was spotted and the British government (Scotland Yard) was soon receiving his reports direct. After the Dominion government was formed, Le Caron was handed over as an agent to a newly formed Canadian secret service - breathed into life by none other than the Father of Confederation, John A. MacDonald (with perhaps a little inspirational whisky mixed in).
Le Caron reported directly to MacDonald's appointed spy chief, Gilbert McMicken. Le Caron and McMicken got on famously, both men delighting in secret rendezvous, coded messages and some of the dress-up games that went with espionage in a premodern age. McMicken also managed to handle Le Caron's many piteous calls for more pay. I won't spoil the details of how exactly Le Caron, working alongside McMicken, foiled the great invasion of Canada in 1870. That's one of the pleasures of reading Delusion.
Le Caron had some close calls as a spy, nearly exposed in the Fenian ranks on several occasions. Following the fiasco of the 1870 invasion, the Fenian movement was, for all intents and purposes, dead, and Le Caron could turn to other pursuits. Remarkably, he became a practising physician, but remained "on call" for espionage duties. As a physician, he also developed a second, or third, career as a grave robber, just escaping the law and a long sentence after he injudiciously nabbed the body of congressman John Scott Harrison, son of U.S. president William Henry Harrison and father of future president Benjamin Harrison.
When the Fenian movement metamorphosed into a new Irish-American terrorist conspiracy, Clan-na-Gael, which had a thirst for experiments with the new invention of Dr. Nobel known as dynamite (code-word "Delusion" among the Cla-na-Gaelers), Le Caron was called back to the cause and provided tidbits of intelligence from 1870 down to the moment of his exposure, in 1889.
Even his exposure was unorthodox. It came on the day when Le Caron took the stand in public in London to testify against Irish extremists in a famous government commission of inquiry. He survived the subsequent manhunt by those plotting revenge, aided by Scotland Yard bodyguards and what must have been one of the world's most supportive and understanding wives. In old age (for a spy), Le Caron published his memoirs (stretching the chronology a bit), Twenty-Five Years in the Secret Service (1892), and then slipped into obscurity.
Peter Edwards is to be commended for bringing the Le Caron story back to life. But his book had, perhaps, the curse of Le Caron from beyond the grave, a slightly odd inspiration, and is slightly misshapen. Edwards was looking for a story that might resonate with the post-9/11 world of counter-terrorism and fear of threats within. But he doesn't really make much of that angle. As for the story's construction, the main part of Le Caron's adventurous life as a spy hit its prime by 1870, and page 94 (of 300) of Edwards account.
Much of the remainder of Delusion wanders through the byways of Clan-na-Gael and a host of other matters to do with Irish-American revolutionary fevers, sometimes with little connection to Le Caron himself. I would have preferred more of the life before 1870 and less thereafter.
Edwards doesn't make much of the fascinating question of Le Caron's motives as a spy, which had to be the only juice he ran on for most of his long and difficult career. Edwards scratches the surface by pointing to adventure, patriotism and a desire to please his father as motives. But this is a superficial probe of the mentality of Canada's first spy, and there has to be more, perhaps buried in the voluminous correspondence between Le Caron and McMicken, than graces the John A. MacDonald papers in Library and Archives Canada. More Canadian spy stories please!
Wesley Wark is a professor at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, and has compiled an unpublished anthology of Canadian spy stories.
THE HUMAN FACTOR
Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture
By Ishmael Jones
Encounter Books, 383 pages, $27.95
Ishmael Jones is the pseudonym of a CIA deep cover officer who resigned in disgust from the agency after a tour of duty in Iraq. His field was intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, something the agency was short on. While kiss-and-tell memoirs about the CIA are nothing new, this one has a trenchancy because of Jones's despair over a CIA unable to play the spy game effectively.
IN BRIEF SPY BOOKS
THE HUMAN FACTOR
Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture
By Ishmael Jones
Encounter Books,
383 pages, $27.95
Ishmael Jones is the pseudonym of a CIA deep cover officer who resigned in disgust from the agency after a tour of duty in Iraq. His field was intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, something the agency was short on. While kiss-and-tell memoirs about the CIA are nothing new, this one has a trenchancy because of Jones's despair over a CIA unable to play the spy game effectively.
PUTIN'S LABYRINTH
Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia
By Steve LeVine, Random House, 194 pages, $30
U.S. investigative journalist LeVine examines oil-rich Russia's return to its authoritarian roots under former KGB chief Vladimir Putin, and the blood trails that have marked Putin's time in power: the 2002 takeover of a Moscow movie theatre by Chechen terrorists, which resulted in the deaths of more than 100 hostages; the murder of dissident journalist Anna Politkovskaya, supposedly as a birthday "gift" to Putin; the radiation-poisoning death in London of spy-turned-dissident Alexander Litvinenko.
DECLASSIFIED
50 Top Secret Documents That Changed History
By Thomas B. Allen, National Geographic, 320 pages, $30
A history of espionage and covert operations as revealed by documents assembled by the International Spy Museum and veteran writer Allen. It ranges from a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I to the presidential briefing memo from August, 2001, warning George W. Bush that Osama bin Laden was about to attack the United States.
SMOKESCREEN
Canadian Security Intelligence After September 11, 2001
By J. Michael Cole, iUniverse, 164 pages, $16.95
Canadian military historian and former CSIS employee debunks the fear or terrorism that Canada's security-intelligence establishment has used to increase its powers to dangerous levels.