Robert Littell does for the CIA what Mario Puzo did for the Mafia. The Company is an engrossing, multigenerational, wickedly nostalgic yet utterly entertaining and candid saga, bringing to life, through a host of characters—both historical and imagined—the nearly 50 years of this secretive and powerful organization.

In a style both intelligent and ironic, Littell tells it like it was: CIA agents fighting not only 'the good fight' against foreign enemies, but sometimes the bad one as well, with the ends justifying such means as CIA-organized assassinations, covert wars, kidnappings, and toppling of legitimate governments.

Behind every manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre, though, one question spans the length of the book: Who is the mole within the CIA? This astonishing novel captures the life and death struggle of an entire generation of CIA operatives during a long Cold War.

Cayce Pollard is an expensive, spookily intuitive market-research consultant. In London on a job, she is offered a secret assignment: to investigate some intriguing snippets of video that have been appearing on the Internet. An entire subculture of people is obsessed with these bits of footage, and anybody who can create that kind of brand loyalty would be a gold mine for Cayce's client. But when her borrowed apartment is burgled and her computer hacked, she realizes there's more to this project than she had expected.

Still, Cayce is her father's daughter, and the danger makes her stubborn. Win Pollard, ex-security expert, probably ex-CIA, took a taxi in the direction of the World Trade Center on September 11 one year ago, and is presumed dead. Win taught Cayce a bit about the way agents work. She is still numb at his loss, and, as much for him as for any other reason, she refuses to give up this newly weird job, which will take her to Tokyo and on to Russia. With help and betrayal from equally unlikely quarters, Cayce will follow the trail of the mysterious film to its source, and in the process will learn something about her father's life and death.

When Dad becomes the lone caregiver for a dependent adult son, Dad has to answer the terrifying question: What happens if I die first? A retired CIA operative comes to believe he wasted his professional life not only promoting questionable American policies, but missing life with his family.

Suddenly, his wife is gone, and he must learn all that she knew about caring for their mentally retarded son. After a life of planning for contingencies, the former spy must deal with the possibility that he may die before his son. Who will care for the son when the dad spent a life out of the country and now has no one to lean on?