INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Fast and thrilling . . . Life Undercover reads as if a John le Carré character landed in Eat Pray Love.” —The New York TimesAmaryllis Fox’s riveting memoir tells the story of her ten years in the most elite clandestine ops unit of the CIA, hunting the world’s most dangerous terrorists in sixteen countries while marrying and giving birth to a daughterAmaryllis … marrying and giving birth to a daughter
Amaryllis Fox was in her last year as an undergraduate at Oxford studying theology and international law when her writing mentor Daniel Pearl was captured and beheaded. Galvanized by this brutality, Fox applied to a master’s program in conflict and terrorism at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, where she created an algorithm that predicted, with uncanny certainty, the likelihood of a terrorist cell arising in any village around the world. At twenty-one, she was recruited by the CIA. Her first assignment was reading and analyzing hundreds of classified cables a day from foreign governments and synthesizing them into daily briefs for the president. Her next assignment was at the Iraq desk in the Counterterrorism center. At twenty-two, she was fast-tracked into advanced operations training, sent from Langley to “the Farm,” where she lived for six months in a simulated world learning how to use a Glock, how to get out of flexicuffs while locked in the trunk of a car, how to withstand torture, and the best ways to commit suicide in case of captivity. At the end of this training she was deployed as a spy under non-official cover–the most difficult and coveted job in the field as an art dealer specializing in tribal and indigenous art and sent to infiltrate terrorist networks in remote areas of the Middle East and Asia.
Life Undercover is exhilarating, intimate, fiercely intelligent–an impossible to put down record of an extraordinary life, and of Amaryllis Fox’s astonishing courage and passion.
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Living in the northern Virginia suburbs of DC I know (or probably know) a lot of people who work for the CIA as well as some of the other secret alphabet agencies. They can’t talk about anything. Fox has a terrific, evocative voice and writes compellingly of how she came to devote more than a decade of her (young) life right out of college to protecting her country–at the personal cost of two “administrative” marriages that would break your heart. Brutally honest, searing, and poignant–highly recommended.
As a sometime writer of espionage tales, I’m drawn to spy memoirs not for nuts-and-bolts descriptions of tradecraft (there rarely are any) but to get an insight into how and why intelligence operatives end up in their jobs and how their minds work. It takes all kinds: the life-on-the-edge types who gravitate to fieldwork and the ever-present risk of exposure and worse; the techies and artists who build the sometimes outlandish gear the field operatives use or devise their false identities; and the analysts who can piece together hundreds or thousands of tiny pieces of information gathered from across the globe to form a picture that may have far-reaching consequences (a job I sort-of had at the end of my Air Force career). I read to find out who these people are and how they got that way.
Life Undercover fulfills this purpose admirably. The CIA recruited Amaryllis Fox, the author, out of grad school in Georgetown into their analysis shop, where she specialized in tracking nuclear proliferation and arms dealing. Then she entered the Agency’s Clandestine Service, becoming a field operative under non-official cover (NOC), which is the intel world’s version of doing acrobatics without a net over a swimming pool full of pit vipers. There she stayed until she couldn’t take it anymore.
Fox writes engagingly about her experiences. Her recounting of her path to spookhood is lyrical and periodically lovely in its imagery. Once she reaches Langley, she pulls back a bit, perhaps knowing that there’s only so much she can say about her work there before the Agency’s censors turn her manuscript into ribbons. She talks about how her job colors her life and relationships, and discusses with some genuine feeling her two “Agency marriages” — semi-manufactured nuptials designed to allow a mate to share her life without requiring her to lie to him all the time — and the endings to both. She also successfully describes the claustrophobia and paranoia induced by living as a NOC in Shanghai with a housekeeper who is most probably a Chinese spy. As with the authors of Blowing My Cover and The Company We Keep, Fox finally pulled the plug on her CIA career because the all-consuming work finally threatened to crush her spirit if not her sanity.
Some of the reviewers here seem miffed that the author came from a privileged background and went to a top-shelf university. But that’s where the CIA recruits its case officers — there are a lot of very smart people at Langley with a lot of advanced degrees, and the Agency has the luxury of not needing to trawl for applicants at Pahrump Community College. Others seem disappointed that Fox didn’t leave the service as a broken husk of a human being, an addict of one sort or another, or missing a major limb. Well, she had the sense to get out before that happened. The strung-out, washed-up, drunken spy who gets called in for one last mission is a good (if overused) plot device in fiction but makes for miserable humanity. My congratulations to her on her escape and on sticking the landing off the compound.
Life Undercover is the personal story of a bright, talented woman who for a while was in the shadowy end of our checkered War on Terror. If you want spy derring-do or a primer on fieldcraft, move along; this ain’t it. But if you want to see how the Girl Next Door becomes a for-real Harriet the Spy, you could do a lot worse than this.
A much-needed matron of the spy world.
Being an author of spy novels, a friend of mine gave me the hardcover version of this book for a birthday present and it turned out to be a great gift!
Amaryllis Fox’s autobiography reads like veteran-written prose. For the first two acts, the high-level writing seemed too expertly crafted for a debut effort. But all writers use editors with the goal being the best finished product possible and to keep the reader…well…reading, so it’s not surprising if that was the case. But then, finally, by the third act, I sensed Ms. Fox’s true voice coming through.
The first act depicts her storybook childhood, but with intriguing mysteries and family secrets. Clearly inspired by a mother figure who was loving and creative, (as hinted by her given name), Fox’s “coming of age” takes on several connotations. Her early personal life and subsequent intensive spy training culminates until she mellows into a seasoned problem-solving matron of the spy world, taking the craft to new heights. Like a global “middle child,” she shuns the knee-jerk bickering of political rivals and strives for common ground, in the dysfunctional family that is the Middle East.
By the end, my thought was that this woman is an enlightened leader, having learned from the best to hone her own innate skills, while giving credit where credit is due and finding diplomatic solutions. I truly hope Fox runs for political office or even POTUS some day!