#ReadThis #DamascusStation A Novel by #DavidMcCloskey @mccloskeybooks @wwnorton
Ernest Hemingway said to write what you know: David McCloskey, ex-CIA, is best qualified to write about the CIA! Damascus Station is a thrilling espionage novel right up there with John LeCarre's best work (reviewed many times-the Night Manager tv show was our 24,000th post) and Clint Eastwood, should you be reading, (and honestly you should since we review everything you do-everyone certainly see the best of the best from the last 50 years: #MovietimeInManhattan #ClintEastwood #50Years @WBPictures WARNERMEDIA CELEBRATES 50 YEARS WITH CLINT EASTWOOD https://www.whomyouknow.com/
It starts out with a winning quote by Mark Twain from The Innocents Abroad (1869) which makes sense both because Twain is among the best and also since the majority of this novel - and emphasis on the fact that this is FICTION - is set abroad.
Talk about essential workers: the CIA workers are among the MOST essential. All fans of Homeland will enjoy this intense read...and you will probably also love Carrie's real life husband's next exciting endeavor. Knowing that all is written from an accurate point-of-view, the recruiting process with thoughtfully orchestrated pitches (oh yes, Americans are indeed the most convincing see page 79) is indeed interesting and you will also find out why you might not want to stay below the fourth floor or above the tenth on your next trip. We were delighted to see the American aerospace industry highlighted with the stellar F-35 (with the Lockheed F-135 engine bien sur mes amis!).
You might want to read this over your next nice dinner and maybe even have what they're having. (p 128). The structure of the book is well-organized into parts that all make sense. McCloskey is a master of details, an essential trait that all successful authors possess. Pay attention to little USB sticks. Intelligence, Counterintelligence and the eternal struggle between good versus evil all are major themes happening within these hallowed pages.
McCloskey also excels with verbiage using phrases like "lubricated with power." (p. 258) Having a sixth sense and paying attention reading inbetween the lines is key for reading this winner. Something just might be rotten in the state of Denmark.
It is only too bad that Manhattan plays no role in this book, but maybe next time!
The map in the front and the explanations in the acknowledgements in the back are both helpful and essential to round out your Damascus Station experience. Never forget that freedom is not free. Stand up and be counted.
A commendable clandestine caper, Damascus Station is Highly Recommended by Whom You Know.
Sam Joseph is a CIA case officer rocked by—and seeking to avenge—his beloved colleague’s capture, torture, and murder at the hands of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s secret police. Mariam Haddad is a Syrian palace official growing increasingly uneasy supporting a regime that has roughed up and imprisoned her beloved cousin for protesting. When Sam and Mariam meet in Paris, political intrigue mixes with personal chemistry to create an explosive cocktail, igniting the gripping plot of David McCloskey’s DAMASCUS STATION (W. W. Norton & Company, $27.95 hardcover, October 5, 2021).
Spy thrillers should possess an authenticity that allows the reader to suspend disbelief about the author’s fanciful twists and larger-than-life characters, but this book clears a much higher bar. McCloskey was a CIA analyst in Syria and across the Middle East, and the book is thoroughly grounded in realistic details of present-day spycraft, with cyberweapons and sophisticated covert communications replacing Cold War tropes. Here, the timeless fascination of human intelligence—from surveillance and countersurveillance to the slow dance of asset recruitment—is revealed in all its nuance. Insider CIA slang, rules, and acronyms abound, adding not just realism but color and humor.
But it’s not just the spycraft that McCloskey is concerned with. The complexities of the civil war in Syria come to life thanks to his experience and eye for describing detail. The Damascus sections could double as city travel guides, and some events—a Syrian mob overrunning the US Embassy, a sarin gas attack, an assassination attempt on Assad and his deputies—are drawn from the actual history of those turbulent years, which McCloskey experienced firsthand.
Moreover, to his credit and the novel’s benefit, McCloskey captures not just the place but the people, via three-dimensional characters such as Ali and Rustum Hassan, Assad’s spy catcher and his estranged brother, head of the Republican Guard; the wise dissident exile Fatimah Wael; rebels Abu Qasim and his wife, nicknamed Black Death for her expertise as a sniper; and others. Across the spectrums of politics, class, and ethnicity, each character is given dignity and a coherent psychological and emotional logic behind his/her actions. Dilemmas are the currency of spy stories, but what DAMASCUS STATION achieves is the moral complexity of a literary novel. Sam Joseph is the hero, but the reader gets not just the other side of the story but all sides.
After Sam recruits Mariam to help him find and kill his colleague’s murderer, they fall in love in safe houses in romantic locales like the French Riviera and a Tuscan villa. In scenes that range from tender to sexy, McCloskey deftly shows the higher stakes involved when the secrets new lovers share aren’t just emotional risks but matters of life and death. And when Mariam brings Sam to her Krav Maga lesson, it becomes an amusing set piece dramatizing their uncertainty, fear, and attraction.
With an unforgettable endgame involving Assad’s Russian allies, DAMASCUS STATION is a vividly cinematic, smart, and authentic thriller about love, loyalty, and the tangled forces that connect and divide us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID MCCLOSKEY is a former CIA analyst and a former consultant at McKinsey & Company. While at the CIA, he worked in field stations across the Middle East and briefed senior White House officials and Arab royalty. He lives in Texas.
TITLE: Damascus Station
AUTHOR: David McCloskey
ISBN: 978-0-393-88104-2
