by Thomas Maier
Release Date: March 25, 2025
2025 Hanover Square Press
Ebook ARC; 480 Pages
ISBN: 978-1335000606
ASIN: B0CW1HKMXV
Audiobook: B0D3RYDG1V
Genre: Non-Fiction / WWII
Source: Review copy from publisher
2.5 / 5 Stars
Summary
As a tough but smart Italian American kid, Ernest Cuneo played Ivy League football at Columbia University and was in the old Brooklyn Dodgers NFL franchise before becoming a City Hall lawyer and “Brain Trust'' aide to President Roosevelt. He was on the payroll of national radio columnist Walter Winchell and mingled with the famous and powerful. But his status as a spy remained a secret, hiding in plain sight.
During this time, Cuneo began a love affair with one of Churchill's agents at Rockefeller Center—Margaret Watson, a beautiful Canadian woman with a photographic memory ideal for spycraft. In one nighttime attack, Watson was nearly smothered to death by a Nazi assassin inside her women’s dormitory near Rockfeller Center. Cuneo’s transformation from a gridiron athlete into a high-stakes intelligence go-between and political influencer is one of the great untold stories of American espionage. He has remained “invisible” in the public eye—until now, with this unveiled look into his life.
During this time, Cuneo began a love affair with one of Churchill's agents at Rockefeller Center—Margaret Watson, a beautiful Canadian woman with a photographic memory ideal for spycraft. In one nighttime attack, Watson was nearly smothered to death by a Nazi assassin inside her women’s dormitory near Rockfeller Center. Cuneo’s transformation from a gridiron athlete into a high-stakes intelligence go-between and political influencer is one of the great untold stories of American espionage. He has remained “invisible” in the public eye—until now, with this unveiled look into his life.
My Thoughts
The Invisible Spy was a tough read for me and I actually had to put it down the first time as I couldn't finish it, but picked it back up again this year and was finally able to push through. I actually felt the word 'spy' was used rather loosely for the tale being told in relation to Cuneo which is why I had such a problem with this book. In all honesty, I was much more interested in the rest of the people the book discussed because I felt like it was more of who Cuneo knew and associated with than what he actually did. The overall information is good, but what Cuneo did was more in the veins of misinformation and redirection than actually spying.
As always with such a novel, we get a look into Cuneo's early life and how he developed his connections that would enable him to do some of the things he did during the war. And for pretty much three-quarters of the book, this is what we got. Yes, some interesting historical figures popped into the book from time to time and although the book wasn't about them, I wish more details had been given about them as they were much more interesting and definitely had an impact on what happened with Cuneo's social circle of people. There was actually a lot of good information that was included, but it got wrapped up in the mundane details of things going on in New York City as well as repetitive and commonplace goings-on that it was a challenge to push through at times. I think a lot of it could have been edited out to make for a tighter timeline of events that would have been more interesting for a reader. And I have a history background, taught it for over thirty years, and love this kind of stuff. But when you introduce a person, you don't need to remind the reader over and over again who they are and what they do as it gets old, fast.
The book was very detailed and I appreciated that, but I am not sure it really gave the reader the impression that was intended as the execution was uneven and sort of jumps around in a way that does not make it easy for readers who are not familiar with events to get a good grasp. Although I am familiar with a lot of things from this book, there was some new information for me and I enjoyed learning about some of these things. However, I was always skeptical throughout the book as the author maintained it was because of his association with Cuneo that influenced Ian Fleming with regards to his 'Bond' books, but having read several biographies on Fleming, I feel like this information is not necessarily factual and nothing in this book convinced me otherwise. However, the last quarter of the book was probably the best part and I did enjoy reading about the Cold War and the roles both Cuneo and Fleming played although the parts about Fleming were not new to me, Cuneo's role definitely was and I did appreciate learning more about that.
Verdict
The Invisible Spy definitely had its moments and there were a lot of very interesting sections in this book, things that I learned in more detail and things that were new to me so I very much appreciated the amount of research and detail that were into those descriptions. I'm still not convinced that Cuneo had a role to play with regards to Fleming and the influence he had on his writing the Bond books, but the last quarter of this book was the most fascinating and I wish the author had used that style throughout the book. For the most part, I found the flow of the earlier sections to be quite different and tough to get through and the good information seemed to be shoved between unnecessary descriptions that could have been edited out. All in all, this really wasn't about a spy but more about spying, Cuneo's manipulations, his associations with actual spies and the people who ran the spy networks, and a very loose association with Fleming.
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