Customer Reviews

Into the Mirror: The Life of Master Spy Robert P. Hanssen

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Into the Mirror is deceptively good. My early impression was negative. The choice of fictionalizing the tale was odd, in my opinion. The dialogue was stilted, nerdy, Father-Knows-Bestish. But as I persevered through the book, I finally understood what the author was doing--speaking as Hanssen spoke--and began to appreciate it. In the end, the story resonates strongly.

It's helpful to know what the book isn't before you read it. It is not a detailed analysis of the specific criminal activities of Robert P. Hanssen, master spy. You won't learn the nitty-gritty on what secrets were passed to whom and when. Instead, Into the Mirror is a glimpse into the psyche of Hanssen himself; how he grew up; how he thought; how he wound up as a spy.

Part of the frustration in reading the book was that fictional tales generally require a likeable central character. Hanssen is not, and Schiller--properly--makes no apparent attempt to make him so. Once the reader accepts the notion that the protagonist is a weird, perverted traitor with few redeeming qualities, the reading gets easier.

The fascinating aspect of the story is that the trail leading Hanssen to spy for the Soviets and Russians against the U.S. wasn't littered with the kind of political travesties one would expect. Hanssen wasn't the victim of capitalism gone bad, or Rodney Kingesque mistreatment. His parents weren't ultra-liberals, communists, anti-American, or even particularly political. His father, though overbearing and mildly abusive, was a big-city cop. Hanssen was a converted Catholic who appeared to love his country and excel at his job. He was just your average schlep with a money management problem. This led to his first sale of classified secrets for cash, which quickly led to a near-clinical compulsion to spy for the pure excitement of it.

Into the Mirror reveals a strange man with unquenchable and unsavory sexual tendencies (allowing his best friend to secretly watch him make love to Mrs. Hanssen), and a twisted value system that somehow allowed espionage (which he knew led to the deaths of several men) to coexist with Catholicism. Oddly, we see a man who, but for an errant fork in life's road, could have easily been a patriot and contributing FBI agent. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.

Into the Mirror moves at such a break-neck pace that this book should be arrested for breaking the literary speed limit. Some may (and do) quibble about the fact this is a docudrama -- a dramatization of a true, high profile news story -- but it is FUN, a can't-put-it-down read and highly enlightening.

I"ve read many books this year but I will say in all seriousness: this was one of the most enjoyable, compelling books I've read all year. The story centers on FBI Special Agent Robert Philip Hanssen, whose arrest on Feb 2001 on 15 counts of espionage pitchforked him into the headlines. I read many of the complicated, sometimes dry news reports -- but this book makes it REAL. So when I heard he was sentenced in May to life imprisonment I had a MUCH different reaction than I would have if I had not read this book.

The reason: when you hear about a spy case like this you wonder "how could he do this? He just wanted the money?" and it ends in puzzlement.

Schiller's book, based on many interviews done by Schiller and Norman Mailer, and using Mailer's mini-series screenplay as a guide, really brings the story alive. It's as dramatic as
watching a top flight film or mini-series and more instructive than all the news reports I read on this put together. How did Hanssen get from Point A (an innocent child) to Point
B (one of the most destructive spys in American history and only the third FBI agent ever accused of spying)? This book provides some of the answers.

There are a slew of revelations you'll find here that explain why. Just a few: constant abuse by his policeman father (lasting into adulthood); his almost sexual thrill at deception
and betrayal; the fun he had changing his grades in school; his betrayal of his wife, church, stated religious beliefs and best friend; his siphoning of gas out of FBI cars; his constant
problem with credit card debt and economic dependence on his gloating father. There are too many to go into here.

The book makes sense of the whole chronology (included in the back of the book) ...and in the end you feel you KNOW Hanssen. He's NOT sympathetic. You still feel outrage. But some puzzlement turns to pity. Hanssen was a master spy and Into the
Mirror is a master docudrama.

Lawrence Schiller's "Into the Mirror" is a riveting, page-turning expose into the secret life of FBI agent turned spy, Robert P. Hanssen. Hanssen's misdeeds and treason are depicted in a researched and documented book that conveys the dark side of betraying one's country. Schiller attempts to explain Hanssen's duplicity by creating a psychological picture of a very complex individual using literary license in an effective and believable manner. For those who do not want "just the facts" but seek some sort of explanation for Hanssen's betrayal of the USA, Schiller's book is the right stuff.

Schiller portrays Hanssen's life as full of contradictions; from his dogmatic membership in the Catholic society, Opus Dei, to his prurient pornographic pursuits; from his rise in the ranks of the FBI's prestigious counterintelligence squad to his indictment for espionage. Never before has the nation seen a traitor like Robert P. Hanssen gain access to the halls of justice masquerading as a protector of liberty all the while posing as Ramon for his Moscow handlers. We can only hope that it will never happen again.

I read this book in two short sittings finding myself pulled into Schiller's portrayal of Hanssen's clandestine life. You have to feel sorry for Hanssen's family for the pain and disgrace he brought on them, but you will feel no sympathy for Hanssen himself who you learn from the text took up spying to pay off credit card bills and live a more lavish lifestyle. Hanssen will never see in his mirror the face of a patriot.

"Into The Mirror" is the first work written by Lawrence Schiller that I've read. Naturally, I was extremely interested in reading about Robert P Hanssen's life. After all, who wouldn't wonder what kind of a childhood or life Hanssen had lived before/during that of a turncoat spy? When Hanssen's story first broke in the news media, and his position with the FBI that had allowed for his twenty years of spying, I was quite appalled. Who wasn't? Still, like every other American, I soon developed my own opinion. I thought Hanssen spied for the money. After reading Schiller's book, my first impression was right. With his back financially against the wall, Hanssen found an easy way out of his problem. Yet, I kept wondering how this man could sleep at night for twenty years, knowing what he had done. Not only had this traitor put the lives of every American in harm's way by divulging pertinent top-secret information to the Russians, but also the lives of his wife and six children. What a monster! There's no doubt in my mind that Hanssen has to be one very sick and mentally deranged individual. He endured a childhood that was a nightmare. An abusive father who openly flaunted his womanizing in front of his wife and Robert. No doubt, dressed in his policeman's uniform, Hanssen's father considered himself another King Kong. The things Hanssen's father did to him were incomprehensible and unforgettable. Yet Schiller showed in his research that Hanssen grew to manhood with a different outlook about life, marriage and raising children. The author is trying to convince his readers that Hanssen was unfaithful only once to his wife. That may be the case. Who oculd actually know for sure? But after reading the way Hanssen defiled Bonnie with his best friend, Jack, by showing Jack nude pictures of her and allowing Jack to observe what took place in the privacy of their bedroom...well, this is the part that proves Hanssen is mentally deranged. Perhaps he was trying to compare himself and his position to that of James Bond-Agent 007. The job put him above anyone or anything else. He too was another King Kong like his father, while toting his Walther PPK as an FBI agent. But instead of womanizing, which I would think he remembered his father here, he chose pornography. Everything Hanssen did in regard to sex was not normal. My only problem with this book was wondering if Schiller really did believe Hanssen's wife, Bonnie, was so gullible and naive. Surely he knows women better than that. If I found $10,000 in one of my husband's socks, I'd know something was going on. It's hard to beleive Hanssen succeeded for twenty years in giving his wife this kind of a snow job. Otherwise, I think Schiller has done a wonderful job in the research and portraying of Hanssen's life. I can't wait for the mini-series. I enjoy a book that keeps me wanting to turn the page. "Into The Mirrow" kept me turning its pages. I started reading and couldn't put the book down. I plan on recommending this book to my library book review group. And now, I'm going to the library and look for Schiller's book "American Tragedy".

Based on Schiller's works on the Simpson and Jon Benet Ramsey cases, I had expected a well researched analysis of the Hanssen case and some insight into his character. Instead, the book is a fictionalized retelling of the story already better explored in David Vise's book (The Bureau and the Mole) and Elaine Shannon and Ann Blackman's book (The Spy Next Door). These latter two books compliment one another rather than rehash the now known facts. With the exception of a few pages devoted to Schiller's recounting of Hanssen's wife and eldest daughter's reactions to his arrest, there is nothing new in this book and, without reference to the earlier works, you have no idea what is fact and what is fiction. An interesting side question is what is behind the Schiller/Mailer collaboration. Although the book jacket describes the book as being an based on an investigation by Mailer and Schiller, the title page and book back gives only Schiller credit for authorship. The "Author's Note" reads like it was negotiated between Schiller's and Mailer's lawyers.

This is one of the worst books I have ever read. I picked this book up at the library, thinking it would be an accounting of the life of Robert Hanssen. Instead, there are pages of expository dialogue presented as fact, even though at least two of the speakers (Bob and Bonnie Hanssen) are prevented from talking to the media. Page after page, chapter after chapter, Mr. Schiller describes the conversations and activities of the two of them in the privacy of their own home, even though he acknowledges he never interviewed them. Hanssen is sick; Mr. Schiller, in presenting these conversations and scenarios is, at best, seriously deluded. I can't believe I picked this book up in the non-fiction section. This book is as factual a telling of Hanssen's story as Mel Brooks's "History of the World" is historically accurate. To all librarians and catalogers out there, please reclassify this book as fiction. To people interested in this book, if you must read it, please check with your local library. The overdue fines will be cheaper and go to a better cause than enabling Mr. Schiller to write such tripe with the royalties he will receive. Any other book on Hanssen is better written and more accurate than this one; I'm sure even the made-for-tv movie will be an improvement.

"Into the Mirror: The Life of Master Spy Robert P. Hanssen" by Lawrence Schiller: ISBN 0-06-050809-4(2002) HarperCollins Publ., is a 306 page hardcover novelette which strives to present, profile and proseltytize Robert Philip Hanssen (born April 18, 1944) an FBI Special Agent since 1976 who was arrested Feb. 2, 2001 for espionage (15 counts), pled guilty and was sentenced May 10, 2002 to life imprisonment.

The reader might be jolted in learning that neither Spy Hanssen nor wife Bonnie were interviewed (DOJ interdiction) by the author Schiller (or confederate Norman Mailer). Schiller's "intention" was to fabricate a psychological likeness of Hanssen from incidents to divulge his complexities and unique traits during the(ir) nine-month investigation and "hundreds of hours interviewing" the family, friends, frequenter (KGB), & fellow church followers.

What emanates is a strange bedfellow, beset with a rigid OCD personality, whose bedroom marital sexual feats are majestic, whose Narcissism is manifest by pleonastic masturbation and who has a passion for talking to/at/into mirrors. A man whose insecure wife is appalled to learn of his penchant for Playboy magazine but is amenable to posing nude to fulfill his Polaroid fetish. His morality is manifest by switching allegiance to his wife's church, joining Opus Dei, and proclaiming moralistic pretensions as he becomes engulfed in espionage with the KGB for big bucks, a diamond, and a better life style for his family.

The good news is that "Into the Mirror..." is easy reading as we are given privy to shallow characters possessing those crude but perhaps interesting para-erotic eccentricities and personal mannerisms which may hold a reader's attention. I had expected a factual investigative journalistic report after Schiller's "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town."

One thing this book proves is Schiller can't write his way out of a paper bag (if indeed he even wrote it at all.) Describing itself as non-fiction presented in the form of a novel, it fails miserably on both counts. Instead it's quite transparently a quickie translation of a television script into a junk book. And junk is no exaggeration as I found this so-called book remaindered for five bucks at an overstock store.

Check out the helpful Amazon stats on this work and you'll find the writing is at the level of a 7th grader with the absolute minimum of multi-syllable words.

The case of Robert Hannsen is absolutely fascinating, but this "book" definitely is not.

Schiller completely fails to tell what should be a best selling and exciting story. As other reviewers have said in Amazon.com reviews, this book is perhaps one of the worst books I have ever had the displeasure of reading. I worked with Robert Hanssen at the FBI for over 18 years and this "historical novel" based on a screen play is mostly fiction made for TV. The book does not focus on Hanssen's espionage activities and is of no value to those who wish to find out more about perhaps the most damaging spy this country has ever had. Norman Mailer should be embarassed to have his name even associated with such a poorly written and poorly researched book.

Where did the author get the dialogue? - seems to have a fixation on masturbation - was he peeping on Hanssen and watching him masturbate all over the place? Awful! This thing goes into my "unfinished books" stack.