B.W. Leavitt welcomes the reader in a taut setting in How to Train a Spy, where a common person is all at once plunged into darkness of international intelligence. The novel is based on the life of Brian Lewis, a New York State correctional officer whose life transforms within the space of one night when two unidentified federal agents come into his workplace. What starts as a bewildering face-off turns out to be the turning point of the life of Brian which not only takes him way out of the commonplace obligation but also places him in the shadowy realm of spy-craft.
It is the transformation of Brian that starts when he is taken to one of the secret underground intelligence operations, a place where secret missions are planned, taken and buried deep below the unsuspecting city. The most interesting thing about Brian is not only the size of the mission he is on the verge of completing but the crudeness of human nature in each preparation. He is not an average action hero. He is a father, a family man, a person who is concerned about the safety of his family of wife and children.
As soon as Brian takes the mission, the actual process of creating a modern spy starts. He is subjected to a sequence of rigorous, multi-dimensional trainings which do not only measure the physical strength but also the mental flexibility. With the training on the skills of using weapons and spying, the skills of escaping and acting as an undercover, Brian is trained on how to be a spy, he is not born one, but he is expertly trained to be a one. Leavitt tells this development in the most realistic way possible: how Brian was brought into learning the Farsi language, while sleeping, how he was being trained as a mini-sub pilot on an embankment that had been disguised in the form of a coastline, how he was being trained by the agency trainers to the extent that they required him to excel at his tasks, yet he had no notion that this world had existed just a few weeks before. These scenes demonstrate that not all courage is loud and at times courage appears like a punishment, endurance and the silent determination not to give up.
The core of the brave personage of Brian is manifested when he enters his false identity of undercover, becoming involved into the world of perils of the Russian-Iranian intelligence services. Knowing that he is a Russian military officer in disguise, he is required to assimilate in one of the black sites in Iran where an effective electromagnetic weapon is being worked out–the type that can cause the paralysis of whole territories. His operation is so tight that there is no room to lose it: collect information, steal the plans, take a photo of the weapon, and get away with it. It is monumental not only to Brian but to the world. It is not just the danger that keeps readers glued because it is the psychological conflict between living a false lifestyle and the fact that he is the focus of constant attention.
The fact that Brian and Jasmine are partners, with Jasmine, the Iranian agent masquerading as his wife, adds one more emotional dimension. Both are on the verge of being exposed, but both have to place their trust on each other. Their partnership brings out a key fact about secrecy which is that it involves vulnerability, collaboration and risk sharing. Their escape effort, which is planned thoroughly using stratum after stratum of deceit, ends in a dramatic faked death that even the surveillance team dispatched to spy on the couple are fooled by.
How to Train a Spy is not only a story of action and spy tactics; it is a story of the sacrifices behind the scenes that make the true hero. After Brian eventually gets back to the United States in a procession of covert extractions, he is not only carrying with him the success of a highly important mission but also the burden of all that secrecy has taken away. The requirements of espionage have changed his family, his identity, his normalcy, it has changed it all. However, the last scene of the novel gives a suggestion that his journey is not yet finished giving the reader an opportunity to consider how his life would continue, a man who has now become, something bigger than he had never anticipated.