Prisoner of Lies - Barry Werth

This work of nonfiction recounts the scary fate of ex-CIA member Jack Downey, who was captured by the Chinese during a covert operation of the early Cold War. Downey remained imprisoned for over twenty years, having fallen between the cracks of various political agendas.

I liked this book for the excellent research and writing. The author knows how to tell a good story.

But that's also where it ends for me. Apart from the book being unnecessarily long, I was turned off by the countless sexualized mentions of women in Downey's life or his surroundings. At one point it was necessary to include that a postcard with “two bare-breasted Intuit women” was bought, though completely irrelevant to the story. There's mention of trips to “whorehouses”, of “booze, broads, and butts”, of womanizers, and somehow the author felt it necessary to describe the different wives of politicians that weren't at all part of the story. I will stop here because I don't want to quote any text from my Advance Reader's Copy before it's final.

The author also chose to intersperse political history with Downey's life story. To some degree this was enjoyable and provided important background, but it got too detailed and tedious, making me almost want to skip those portions. It just seems that this very detailed life story in addition to the history of the Cold War is too much to pack into a book like this.

In summary, this is a well written but very “male” read - glorifying, sexualizing, and then some. I'm a little surprised we still publish such things these days.

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the Advance Reader's Copy!