{"id":7110,"date":"2018-03-12T07:59:13","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T11:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7110"},"modified":"2018-03-12T08:01:38","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T12:01:38","slug":"need-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7110","title":{"rendered":"****Need to Know"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Matrushka\"

photo: Chauncey Huffman, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Karen Cleveland \u2013 Debut Author Karen Cleveland\u2019s new spy thriller comes from a heartfelt place. She wrote it while on maternity leave from her former position as a CIA analyst, and it is steeped with both internal agency politics and maternal concern.<\/p>\n

First-person narrator Vivian Miller has developed an algorithm to help identify the Russian sleeper cells the CIA is convinced are hiding in the United States. Finding a cell\u2019s handler\u2014the only person who knows the agents\u2019 identities\u2014is \u00a0is an essential first step to unmasking the entire group.<\/p>\n

Using her algorithm, she\u2019s eliminated all but one of her handler candidates and is so close to cracking into the computer of the last one\u2014a man named Yury Yakov\u2014that she doesn\u2019t mind the long working hours. Well, she does mind. She has a loving husband, Matt, and four kids at home, including toddler twins, one of whom has a serious heart defect. Fortunately, Matt works from home, and pitches in when she can\u2019t pick up the kids or make the lunches or take Caleb to his doctor appointments. He also cooks.<\/p>\n

In a breakthrough moment early in the book, Vivian finally worms her way into Yury\u2019s computer, and, in a folder labeled \u201cfriends,\u201d finds photographs of the sleeper agents in Yury\u2019s cell. Four are strangers. The fifth is a shocking discovery\u2014her husband Matt. From there on she must try to sort out the lies and deception from the true core of what she thought was a healthy, loving relationship. She really does \u201cneed to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the story, she believes in him, then she doesn\u2019t, then she does, and her waffling on this question may be realistic, or merely convenient, for her and the plot. Vivian\u2019s uppermost concern is the safety of her children, especially as Yury circles nearer. Perhaps Cleveland occasionally overdoes Vivian\u2019s mounting anxiety, but you can understand the confusion she is thrown into and how she naturally does return again and again to her touchstone: keeping the kids safe when she cannot trust anyone.<\/p>\n

The tension is definitely there in this thriller, ratcheting up with each action Vivian does\u2014or does not\u2014take. The most engaging part of the story is her relationship with Matt, as each new event causes her to reevaluate everything that has gone on before and whether she can ever trust him again\u2014a plot question I found rather easier to answer than Vivian did.<\/p>\n

Cleveland evocatively describes the Washington, D.C., setting\u2014the attitudes, travel logistics, and other details. Reportedly, people in the U.S. intelligence community are enthusiastic about this book. and a movie deal is in the works.
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By Karen Cleveland \u2013 Debut Author Karen Cleveland\u2019s new spy thriller comes from a heartfelt place. She wrote it while on maternity leave from her former position as a CIA analyst, and it is steeped with both internal agency politics … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Need to Know - a CIA insider's new spy thriller, in which danger circles the protagonist like a wedding ring.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[193,40,126,32],"tags":[1260,1259,649],"class_list":["post-7110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-espionage","category-fiction","category-reading-2","category-thriller","tag-karen-cleveland","tag-need-to-know","tag-washington-dc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1QG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7110"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7113,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7110\/revisions\/7113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}