‘When I had kids . . . it was mom first and CIA second’
Debut novelist Karen Cleveland’s experience in espionage makes for a hybrid spy drama/thriller
Karen Cleveland met her future husband-to-be around the same time she started working for the CIA. Though she embraced those euphoric highs of early love, Cleveland admits that a darker thought about her new man fleetingly crossed her mind. As a CIA analyst, who would later be recruited for a six-month stint on a joint FBI terrorism task force, she had been warned many times that foreign intelligence might try to get close to her in an intimate way.
“What if he is too good to be true, and he isn’t who he says he is?” Cleveland remembers worrying. Although her concern obviously disappeared, that idea of ultimate betrayal was never completely erased. Cleveland’s momentary doubts would eventually become the inspiration for her page-turner of a debut novel, Need To Know, about a workaholic CIA analyst named Vivian Miller, who discovers her dutiful husband Matt’s photo on a computer connected to a Russian sleeper cell and is faced to confront the fact that he may be a spy. Desperate to keep her fami- ly intact, Vivian commits a treasonous act and becomes embroiled in international espionage, while keeping up with diaper changes and bedtime stories.
Cleveland wrote Need To Know in 2016 during an extended yearlong unpaid maternity leave from the CIA after giving birth to her second son. “It felt like a now or never moment,” she says. “I had gotten to the point that I just wanted a change. Thinking about terrorism day in, day out for years takes a toll. After I had kids I wanted more flexibility in my schedule. But the nature of intelligence work limits the flexibility of the job. You can’t work from home. Writing seemed like something I’d like to do.”
She knew that for her first book she wanted to draw from experiences in her own life as both a CIA analyst and as a mom. The resulting hybrid should satisfy readers who can’t decide between actionpacked procedural spy dramas such as Tom Clancy’s Jack Reach series or the nail-biting suspense of domestic thrillers by the likes of The Couple Next Door author Shari Lapena. Although Cleveland, who lives with her family in Northern Virginia, started writing with rather modest, pragmatic aspirations, she is now poised to become an international bestseller. Rights to the book have been sold in more than 30 territories, and Universal Studios snatched up the film rights with Charlize Theron pegged to star and produce the adaptation.
Cleveland, who is working on a second novel based in Washington, D.C., never returned to the CIA, but still has fond memories of her old employer.
“One of my favourite parts of the job was feeling like I was making a difference. When something you worked on lands on the president’s desk that was a great feeling,” she says.
“But before I had kids, I almost felt it was CIA first and wife second. I felt like there was a fundamental shift when I had kids — it was mom first and CIA second.” Sue Carter is the editor of Quill and Quire.