About Lucy
“She has come in from the cold! This is the beginning of a series, which details the life of an experienced, female case officer. Read it if you want to learn what a member of the National Clandestine Service does. Read it if you like spy novels. Read it if you’re interested because it’s fun, fast paced and well- written. Also note, it is fiction.”
—RW, Former Capitol Hill Foreign Affairs Staffer
Bio
Lucy Kirk worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for over thirty years. She entered the Agency’s Career Trainee Program as one of nine women among some 90 men, then went on to a career as a case officer in the Directorate of Operations (DO). She served in field assignments in the US and abroad, targeting and debriefing individuals with access to information of intelligence interest to the U.S. Government. Lucy eventually became a Chief of Station, one of a handful of female DO officers who reached that level at that time.
She graduated from Wellesley College and went on to earn a graduate degree from American University’s School of International Service in Washington, D.C. Having fallen in love with Argentina—and Latin America—after a summer with the Experiment in International Living, where she lived in Buenos Aires with a wonderful local family, she decided to focus on Latin America Studies in graduate school. Over the years, she worked increasingly on the Soviet Union, and later Russia, because she viewed that geography as the core of intelligence concern over her decades in the Agency. In addition to the DO, she spent three years in the Director of Central Intelligence’s (DCI) Office of Congressional Affairs, carrying out congressional liaison, meeting with Congressmen and senior staffers on Capitol Hill regarding key intelligence topics.
Since retiring from the CIA, Ms. Kirk has has written a series of articles on intelligence issues for the online magazine “Family Security Matters,” which was formed after 9/11 to educate the American public on security issues. In connection with the magazine, she did a range of radio interviews on these issues, for such on-air personalities as Monica Crowley, Alan Coombs and G. Gordon Liddy.
She has just completed a spy novel with a female CIA heroine, set in London, dealing with Kremlin-ordered poisonings in England.
“I don’t often pick up a spy novel, but picked this one up and couldn’t put it down! The plot is gripping and timely. The characters are neither shallow nor larger than life; they could be real. I highly recommend Lucy Kirk’s The Poison Factory.”
—Amazon Reviewer
