One imagines reading SPY DUST that Tony and Jonna Mendez are a charming and fascinating couple with some incredible stories to tell. Too bad the book doesn’t actually tell any of them! Whatever the reason — be it intelligence protection or just bad editing — the book is a mess. It repeatedly skips over the most interesting parts of the narrative — including the climactic exfiltration! They’re supposed to be “masters of disguise” but they include no details of their techniques and, despite having a sizable photo section, no images of themselves in disguise. (Unless you count the two photos of Jonna, who looks like an American tourist… looking like an American tourist.)

On the other hand, they provide more details of their romance than anyone would ever require. I’m glad that they found love, and I actually do think there was a skillful way to make that part of the story but, well, this wasn’t it. It sounds mean, but the route they ended up going had the same effect on me as the Will Farrel Lov-ahs sketch on SNL: toes balled up in squirmy little toe fists.

What they got right: the spy speak! “Tradecraft” is golden.

Thoughts?

Apparently Susan Patron’s Newbery Award-winning book, The Higher Power of Lucky, is being kept off the shelves of school libraries because the word “scrotum” appears on the first page.
Details:  NPR, Publisher’s Weekly, NYTimes, and the LA Times.

Also: oh, thank god.