Damascus Station

Damascus Station by David McCloskey (2023 Swift Press softcover 419pp)

 

The first novel from ex-CIA employee David McCloskey, “Damascus Station” is a contemporary spy thriller with the backdrop of the Syrian civil war. Its hard to pin down when this book is actually set – some events resemble those that took place in the last decade whilst others have not taken place at all, yet.

There are two main viewpoint characters, the first being Sam Joseph a CIA field agent who speaks Arabic and specialises in the Middle East. When a secret operation in Damascus goes wrong and eventually leads to the death of a fellow agent, Sam vows to get even with the Assad regime.

Miriam Haddad is a young Syrian woman from a privileged family who works for the regime. Her main role for the Syrian Palace seems to be travelling around the globe threatening exiled dissidents. The CIA identifies her as a likely candidate to be flipped into becoming a double agent and Sam is assigned to make this happen.

The pair meet in Paris where Sam is undercover as a diplomat. The have several ongoing meetings and soon (you guessed it) they fall in love which of course is against all sorts of CIA regulations.

Sam saves Miriam from a hit squad – one of the competing regime factions back in Syria is trying to send a message by having her killed. Then the action moves to Syria itself.

Things are heating up in the civil war with massacres and chemical weapons being used. Various government security forces vie with each other for power and the favour of the president.

The plot intensifies with rebel bomb plots, assassination attempts and the persistent surveillance on the Damascus streets all causing problems for the star-crossed lovers. Sam must spend hours leading the Syrian agents astray before any actual operations can take place. A lot of this is an excellent display of espionage tradecraft but I’m not sure how well it serves the plot.

Big things happen, people are betrayed, some being captured and tortured. The bad guys are really bad and the goodies are all good, there’s not much nuance or shades of grey. Some of the baddies turn out to be good after all and so on.

It’s an entertaining novel which keeps you reading after a certain point but its all very straight-forward and simple. There’s not too many twists and turns and of course the forces of good prevail in the end.

Enjoyable but perhaps a little less than you might expect from a novel in this genre.