This post-modern novel by Mailer is inarguably the most informed novel of the CIA. This is not callow, veneered, cinema-informed CIA, or any of the "tell-all" non-fiction embellishments of CIA activity. This is a psychological study of the necessary duality of agents, teased from the central soul of the duality of humankind. Mailer has a comprehensive insider's knowledge of the structure and workings of the CIA.

Paradox lives on every layer; the characters in this fiction, other than the main characters, are people such as Howard Hunt, Che Guevara, Marilyn Monroe, John and Robert Kennedy, Allen Dulles--and the list goes on. Mailer cheekily provides notes at the end of the book stating that changing the names to fictional ones would cause readers to say, "That is really Howard Hunt," or, "John F Kennedy," etc., "He just changed their names." By using their known names, he expects readers to say the opposite. There is a very thin membrane separating historical fiction from fact. With cozening and cunning guile, Mailer writes about cozening and cunning in the CIA.

The prose is gorgeous, with sharp imagery, layered references, wry observations, and poetic paragraphs.

This novel also has Mailer's most fully realized female character, Kittredge. She is a CIA psychologist specializing in duality of spirit in both academics and in her career. The public self, the secret self and the inner conflicts that cloud an agent's ethics and takes over his soul are well-developed in Kittredge, as well as in the characters of Harlot and Harry.

This book contains the intricacies of Cold War politics and treachery. I was deeply fraught after reading about Operation Mongoose (as well as other subversive operations) in all its explication. It allowed me to connect the dots better on the enigma of 9/11. I was deeply disturbed, enlightened, and exhilarated to read a colossal, mammoth, unafraid novel about how trespasses into other minds and other countries are accomplished; this does not exclude state-sponsored terrorism by our government.

This is astonishing literature and a spine-tingling filter remover.

Eric Roth (screenwriter of Forrest Gump and The Insider), heavily based the movie, The Good Shepherd, on material from Harlot's Ghost.