• Fiction. By Susan Isaacs. Scribner, $25. Grade: C-

Plot in a nutshell: New Yorker Katie Schottland writes for a "fluffy" but popular cable television series called Spy Guys. The show is based on a novel she penned years earlier when she couldn't get a job - a result of her former employer, the CIA, all but singing "So long, farewell" 15 years ago. And she can't let it go.

One morning, while preparing to take her son, Nicky, to "weight-loss camp," Katie receives a phone call from Lisa Golding, a former CIA colleague known for her habitual lies. Lisa says she has information of "national importance" and can tell Katie why she was mysteriously fired. She promises to call the next day but never phones or returns Katie's subsequent calls. Katie then takes it upon herself to find out what happened to Lisa, ultimately motivated by the desire to learn why she was fired.

In her quest, Katie forms an alliance with two jaded, former CIA employees and journeys to the past through old journal entries regarding activities of her former CIA boss and lover, Benton Mattingly. Eventually, Katie traces her job loss and Lisa's disappearance to a case involving three Germans that she, Lisa and Mattingly worked on as the Cold War was ending.

Sample of prose: "He must have picked up on my unspoken Who the hell are you? because he said, 'I'm Harv. Harvey Aiges. A-I-G-E-S.' I figured that if they were planning on gunning me down, they wouldn't have been so precise about their names. Unless they were truly perverse."

Pros: Isaacs sets Katie's CIA job during the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, which adds depth and nice historical components to the story.

Cons: The action doesn't really begin until Chapter 12, and Katie's over-the-top-active imagination , combined with her job loss obsession, is difficult to digest.

Final word: A woman's inability to let go of a job she had for two years, 15 years ago, doesn't form the basis for an interesting story.