Catch-22 meets Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in this biting comic novel of one spy’s quest for justice—and a ray of truth—when he’s cast into a pit of bureaucratic vipers bent on never-ending expansion of the nest, even if they have to kill to do so.

THE PICKLE FACTORY DEVOURS ITS OWN

KRAY is a nonofficial cover CIA case officer—an overseas NOC operator who works without embassy backup, relying on nerve and ingenuity to recruit and run foreign agents. That is until Headquarters summons him home and drops his naive keister into a dizzying bureaucratic maze, where initiative is taboo and solid officers get torpedoed.

KRAY’s bosses seize on a congressional bonanza—a multibillion-dollar money stream earmarked to field more NOCs. Enter Project GOOWIKI, the “Transformational Human Resources Worldwide Outreach Program.” The covert plan: Spend every penny on consultants and donuts, stack managers on top of managers, and advance nincompoops. KRAY begins to glimpse that the one thing missing is actual spies.

When seven CIA officers die in an overseas suicide bombing, top Headquarters apparatchiks spring into action—not to hit back, but to cover their own broad backsides. Meanwhile, KRAY’s career corkscrews downward. And his return to the field gives Headquarters the perfect opportunity to solve the KRAY problem. Permanently.

Fast, sharp, and bone-dry funny, Sam R. OYKEN’s vast comic debut is Catch-22 with a security clearance, A Confederacy of Dunces with a nation on the line. Bureaucrats obsess over mandatory trainings, cafeteria upgrades, and birthday cakes, while competence quietly bleeds out in a corner. Underneath the laughs and the irony runs a hard moral line: contempt for cowardice, anger at waste, and respect for those who actually risk their lives for the country. None of which plays well—or at all—at the Pickle Factory.