In True Face: A Woman’s Life in the CIA, Unmasked

Mendez (The Moscow Rules), the CIA’s former Chief of Disguise, details her fascinating career in this gripping memoir. Mendez began working for the agency in the 1960s, after traveling across Europe in her early 20s and falling for fellow American John Goeser, whom she met while working at a German bank. After she accepted his marriage proposal, Goeser revealed to Mendez that he was with the CIA. Her ambition and knack for espionage—including her skills in developing clandestine film quickly and accurately—helped her move beyond her initial assignment as a “contract wife” tasked with helping Goeser maintain his cover. Her true métier turned out to be designing disguises, and her skills landed her hazardous assignments in risky locations including Russia and East Germany, where she matched wits with the KGB and the Stasi. (The realistic face masks she designed so impressed then-CIA director William Webster that he had her wear one to a meeting with President George H.W. Bush before peeling it off to reveal her true face.) Mendez’s accounts of her high-pressure field work are enhanced by the more quotidian aspects of her service, including her struggles to take on as much responsibility, and make as much money, as her male counterparts. It adds up to an entertaining and enlightening glimpse inside the opaque world of spycraft. Agents: Grainne Fox and Christy Fletcher, UTA. (Mar.)