Toque and Dagger: A Spy Novel About a TV Chef

BOOK REVIEW: THE ACCIDENTAL JOE

By:  Tom Straw/Regalo Press

Reviewed by: Rodney Faraon

The Reviewer — Rodney Faraon is a 15-year veteran of CIA, serving as a Presidential Daily Briefer and senior China analyst, at home and overseas. After leaving government, he founded the global intelligence practice at The Walt Disney Company, then left to co-found strategic advisory firm Crumpton Global. In his spare time, he founded Aardwolf Creative, a TV/Film production company and served as inspiration and executive producer of the NBC TV series State of Affairs. He was also a contestant on Bravo TV’s Top Chef Amateurs.

REVIEW — The Accidental Joe is a refreshing, rip-roaring tale of a spy operation gone awry by author, screenwriter, and TV producer Tom Straw. Part travelogue, part foodie-porn, part spy novel, Straw combines three pop culture phenomena to create a story from a unique premise: what if the late chef and tv-essayist Anthony Bourdain was dragooned by the Central Intelligence Agency into using his show as cover for action?

As an amateur chef, film and tv producer, and former intelligence officer myself, I read Straw’s novel through three discrete sets of eyes, and all of them found something much to like about the book.

Straw imagines his main character Chef Sebastian Pike as if the late Anthony Bourdain were still alive, the plain-spoken, often profane epicure and chef who traveled the world to connect with people and stories through food, sharing meals, sampling exotic treats, and learning insights about billions of people live. His style was gonzo and glib; cynical?—yes, but not so much that he never saw the best in anyone. Straw transposes that style to The Accidental Joe.

The book begins in contemporary Paris. Pike, a recent widower, has been going through the motions of his own television program (“HANGRY GLOBE”) but lacking the spark in his life. He has the help of a full veteran crew of set assistants, sound guys, food stylists, and camera operators. Cameron “Cammie” Nova is a recent addition as producer, the belly button of the show who came in as a last-minute substitute for Hangry Globe’s regular producer, who had suddenly fallen ill. But Nova is no ordinary producer. She’s just playing a role to hide her true vocation as a CIA specialized skills officer (SSO), homebased in the paramilitary Special Activities Center. Her mission is a single operational act: a brush-pass.


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The plan is for her to sign on a French documentarian named Victor Fabron as a guest for Hangry Globe, just another routine interview for Chef Pike. The documentarian is actually a CIA asset with information critical to US national security. Pike’s show is the pretext she uses to put her in close proximity to Fabron. Unfortunately, the op goes wrong in the middle of filming when a drive-by assassin on a motorcycle kills Fabron. He dies in Pike’s arms, but not before slipping him the thumb drive he was supposed to give to Nova.

The thumb drive is a MacGuffin. Fabron was merely a cutout for the Agency’s most prized asset, a man who sits at the right hand of Vladimir Putin, to communicate that he is in imminent danger of being discovered and needs to defect now. This necessitates a new plan: what was at first a simple operational act becomes a full-blown exfiltration, and Pike’s show is the vehicle to get this asset out of France, where he is visiting with a fellow Putin crony.

Again, as with all good drama, things don’t go as planned. The bad guys are tough, smart, and brutal, and there are two groups of them—all opposed to our heroes and to each other. One is a mysterious white supremacist militia made up of former European intelligence officers; the other, Putin’s cronies and their muscle. What happens next is a wild ride through the South of France, and by “wild” I mean the plot twists are plentiful, one even prompting an audible gasp on my part.

Straw’s pen paints a vivid scene, where culinary delights and covert action entwine. As an amateur chef, I found that the few recipes that Pike made sounded so delicious and unique that I was compelled to go to Whole Foods to reconstruct what those dishes look and taste like (I had no idea a traditional salade Nicoise has no tuna). As a TV producer, I thought Straw’s portrayal of all of the preparation and operations surrounding the taping of a food talk show was spot on. He describes to a T my own experiences behind the camera on State of Affairs, and the blocking, rehearsals, food prep, and frenetics I experienced on Top Chef. As a former CIA officer, I found plausible and authentic the extent to which Straw shows how many intelligence operations aren’t the product of a singleton, but an army of support officers, other assets, and even foreign liaison. Straw’s ability to link all three organically to further the plot is admirable.


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Straw also captures Bourdain’s voice, and it was Tony’s image that appeared in the mind-movies that tracked as I read the book. No Reservations/Parts Unknown never shied from delving into current affairs and politics, and neither does Pike’s Hangry Globe. He wades right into it, a rapscallion who lulls his guests into trust and complacency over delicious meals while interrogating them on their policy positions, attitudes, morals, and actions.

The novel is not without flaws. Writers in the spy genre tend to rely on jargon and acronyms, some of which are made up, to make characters sound like authentic CIA officers. Straw is no exception. For example, Pike’s CIA handlers include the assistant director of the Special Activities Center, which Straw calls the Director of Special Activities, or “the D.S.A.” Global Response Staff members become “paramilitary protective officers,” and are addressed as P.P.O. [last name]. Cammie’s position, as “S.S.O. Nova”, is also miscast. She’s doing the classic work of a case officer, building trust face-to-face with her developmentals and assets and getting them to do her bidding, which is beyond the scope of an SSO. Indeed, in the absence of paramilitary operations, why would SAC be in charge of a brush-pass and the handling of a Russian asset? Russia House would like a word.

The title is clever, but baffling. Straw writes that “Joe” is spy-speak for “asset,” his characters citing Le Carré books as the source of the term. The characters, whether Pike, Cammie Nova, or other CIA officers use the term “joe” organically and regularly. I confess I have never heard the term “joe” used, either at Headquarters or in Station. In fact, the only place I’ve heard it was in the film THE SIEGE with Denzel Washington, as his character angrily excoriates a CIA case officer for not controlling her joe.

As superficial as that is, a bigger flaw lies in the foundations of the plot, specifically, how and why the original mission was set-up. Why would CIA go to the extent of putting a NOC into a commercial television program, to coopt its star, and choreograph a simple brush pass on a TV shoot? This is tradecraft overkill: a massive waste of time and resources, and not too realistic. Later in the book, the ops infrastructure makes for the perfect artifice to enable an exfiltration. But that is sheer serendipity; there is no way that the CIA officers in the story would have anticipated the need to do an exfil.

Despite these shortcomings, Straw tells a good yarn that moves quickly, is easy and fun to read, and frankly, not implausible. I do think if Anthony Bourdain was put in Pike’s place, things would go about the same way. Tony liked spy stuff. The last time I spoke with him was a few months before he died, when he had been denied entry into Albania because the government expected he would make trouble. I told him “Congratulations, like a CIA officer you are now considered ‘P.N.G’d’ – Persona Non Grata!”

He loved that.

The Accidental Joe earns a solid 3 out of 4 trench coats

3

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