An interesting book on the intriguing marriage of magic tricks and intelligence operations. Overall, a quick read, but not a book I can rave about. ( )

Question: Are the tricks and deceptions described by John Mulholland in his CIA manual of magic for spies more James Bondesque or Maxwell Smartish? Answer: Definitely the latter.

Many of the hocus-pocus methods described in this CIA manual require sleight-of-hand. I say "hocus-pocus" lovingly, speaking from my vantage as an amateur magician who enjoys reading books about trickery and deception, always on the lookout for tricks that I can add to a future act.

In this book you will find descriptions of skills that require practice and lots of it. It will take more than a careful reading of this manual to teach a novice, spy or not, how to master deceptive moves that will fool an audience. Magic is a performing art, not a science.

For example, Mulholland devotes 22 pages to the handling of tablets -- poison pills ranging in size from one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter to a pill as large as three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, bigger pills requiring different handling described elsewhere in the manual. Here the CIA agent-in-training will find detailed instructions for concealing, stealing, palming, and surreptitiously dropping a poison pill into an enemy's drink under her nose. Method One, where the tablet is concealed in a matchbook, works with smokers. Method Two, where the tablet is concealed by a piece of paper, works with smokers and non-smokers alike. Both methods require patter, a smooth and plausible line of gab designed to misdirect the victim's attention to something other than your real intentions.

Without the necessary commitment to oft-repeated dry runs, this trick along with many other tricks in this manual are arrant setups for flubs, goofs, and pratfalls in the manner of Maxwell Smart. I will go out on a limb and say that very few people, CIA agents or not, would possess the digital dexterity and showmanship to master the performance skills required by the magic described in this book in the manner of James Bond.

One of the maxims of magic is practice, practice, practice. Master magicians, whether professional or amateur, will spend hundreds of hours practicing to become proficient at a sleight that will take only seconds to perform. Neglect practice and these performance skills will rapidly decline. I cannot imagine a CIA agent, for whom magic is not his first love, practicing these skills day after day and week after week (as a magician would) to be ready for a performance that may never materialize. I repeat -- preparation, patter, and performance are not quickly learned nor long maintained without rehearsal, and lots of it.

Bottom Line: I really like this book. John Mulholland is my all-time favorite writer of magic books. I recommend this book without reservation for magicians, including aspiring magicians, but not for wishful spies. ( )

small blue postit tabs on pages 49 (mkultra), 69 (art of deception), 144 (cigarette/object removal), 183 (object removal by women), 207 (recognition signals)