by Kristen B.
It’s been awhile since I’ve read a really good stand alone spy thriller. Damascus Station kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering how it was all going to end. Sam Joseph is a CIA agent, with a specialty in recruiting assets and a penchant for high stakes gambling in Vegas. He’s managed not to become too cynical about his work. We meet him while he’s trying to get another CIA agent and a scientist out of Syria before the scientist is arrested. The operation goes bad, and it fuels the rest of the story.
Mariam Haddad is the privileged daughter of a Christian family who works in Assad’s government in Damascus, but not entirely happily. She’s aware enough to understand the deal with the devil her family has made for its own survival. When she is asked to coerce an opposition member to come back to Syria, mostly by threatening the woman’s family, Mariam begins to ask serious questions about what she’s doing with her life.
The book spends close to the first hundred pages setting all the pieces on the board, and there are a lot of them beyond our two main characters. Author McCloskey does a great job of making the secondary characters well drawn and interesting, from Mariam’s rebellious cousin to the CIA station chief. My favorites are the three BANDITOS brothers who help Sam run surveillance. The Syrian players are equally interesting, including rival factions within the regime’s security offices and a pair of Sunni rebels from Douma who carry out assassinations. Ali Hassan is a top level Syrian counter-intelligence operative, who is feuding with his brother Rustum, the man in charge of secret prisons and political interrogations. Ali is a good man caught in a bad situation, whereas Rustum is a monster planning to use sarin gas against his fellow Syrians.
The ever increasing stakes are ratcheted by questions of who has been “made” and who is safe. The emotional stakes are high, too, as Sam and Mariam have an immediate, mutual attraction. The rules forbid their entanglement, but their hearts know differently. The book moves quickly, from Syria to the US to France and Italy, then back again. As the plot moves from setting up the board through to the fast-paced, brutal end game, you have to race to keep up with all the characters and figure out what’s really happening. The payoff is worth it!
The author leavens the tension with enough humor and personality that I really invested in the story and the characters. Station Chief Artemis Proctor is a Class-A Character! She seems to be the recurring character in other books by McCloskey (Moscow X and The Seventh Floor), which are now at the top of my summer reading list. His background with the CIA informs his novel with detailed spycraft and knowledge of how things work, but doesn’t slow down the story too much. After all, the trade of espionage is part of what makes the genre so much fun to read.
Damascus Station by David McCloskey is available in print.
Kristen B. is a devoted bookworm lucky enough to work as the graphic designer for HCLS. She likes to read, stitch, dance, and watch baseball (but not all at the same time).
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