Damascus Station by David McCloskey

Sam Joseph is a veteran CIA operative, sort of between assignments. He is stationed in Paris to be kind of available if needed to cover a conference where a number of high ranked Syrian officials are in attendance. The CIA is concerned because the Assad regime is getting out of hand with it's heavy-handed tactics at keeping the populace and political challengers in line. In particular, one of the heads of the Security Office may be behind the abduction, interrogation, torture and ultimate murder of Val, an American operative working in Syria.  Sam is joined by the BANDITOS, three Christian Syrians that have been contracted by the CIA primarily as sets of local eyes and ears who can move amongst the locals without attraction attention. I liked the BANDITOS.

Some of the CIA folks in Paris think it wise to put the squeeze on Assad, et al. They need someone on the inside. They carefully identify those in attendance, look into their background, and narrow down the field as possible candidates to go undercover for information about those responsible for Val's death. Back and forth go the discussions until one is singled out. Miriam Haddab. Born into a military family, works in the Palace, but doesn't appear to be enamored with the Assad regime. 

Once singled out (and OK'd by Langley), Miriam is now on the CIA's radar. Joe will make the recruitment pitch (multiple pitch's it turns out). As the job is mostly snatching some papers, Miriam reluctantly agrees.

Next task: teach her the skills needed. She is already skilled in Krav Maga so combat skills take a back seat to the more routine, and critically important, surveillance detection route; how to determine if one is being followed and how to lose a tail (and the skills needed for dead drops, brush passes, etc.). Sam takes Miriam on numerous days of practice to sharpen her skills in various locales as they inch their way to Damascus.

Arriving in Damascus, Miriam is introduced to the Chief of Station, a hard nose, profane, no nonsense experienced woman named Proctor who is noted for never going out without a knife and keeps a Mossberg combat shotgun close by. She has just two rules: get the information, protect the source. All else is negotiable.

So far, it's kind of straight forward. ID a recruit, sell them on the plan, teach, now go active. Once in Damascus, life gets far more complex what with car bombs, daily mortar fire, multiple factions at odds with each other and Assad/cronies and their own search for a mole. 

At at this point, I'll leave it to you. The fits and starts, the feints, treachery and betrayals, the lies and questionable truths, all get muddled up as plans start, stop, shift, get betrayed, resurrected, not to mention the bureaucracy between Damascus and Langley once the decision is made to take out a Syrian General that has to be approved in real time from half a world away. 

 McCloskey is a former CIA analyst so get ready for gritty details about the inner workings of the CIA in both Langley and in the field. You'll know way more about how the CIA does what it does. If you ask me, I'm kinda surprised the CIA office that has to sign off on such stories approved this. Sure seemed filled with skills and devices that I would have thought the CIA might just as well like to keep quiet. 

As with all novels, there are jacket blurbs with laudatory praise for the author and the quality of presentation. This one also has such praise. What stands out is that the stellar reviews come from former CIA Directors: General David Patraeus and Leon Panetta with Patraeus going as far as to say " . . . the best spy novel I have ever read." One of the recent books I read said that McCloskey was the best spy novelist writing today. I'd never heard of him until then. Damascus Station is his first book (published in 2021) and it was a finalist for the International Thriller Writer's first book award. He has four more books out that you can bet I'll be reading before too long. 

In short: this was terrific. Expertly plotted and told. A spy readers dream. 

ECD                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Talisman, A Time Travel Mystery

 Tom Catalano has provided us with another novel, Talisman, a Time Travel Mystery. I’ve been a fan of time travel stories since the age of nine when I discovered a series of time travel short stories in Boys’ Life, the magazine of Boy Scouts. I remember getting each monthly publication and loving those stories. I was always disappointed when it did not contain another time travel adventure. I rated the time travel story entitled The Little Book by Selden Edwards as being the best book I read in 2012. Catalano has a different take on time travel in his novel Talisman, and it was delightful, but you’ll have to read it to see how it’s different. I will give a way one unique feature to the story, and that was that time travel could only be backward, never forward. One definition of talisman is that it’s a good luck charm that magically wards off evil spirits, but sometimes, it seems to draw evil spirits to the owner.

Professor Henri Rutherford was an esteemed archeology professor at the University of Chicago, and he took a group of his students to the island of Antigua in the Caribbean for a summer field work experience. He was renowned for making discoveries on such excursions, so his students (John, Taylor, Harrison, Louis, and Hannah) were all thrilled to be with him for a couple of months of field research. John Shaw was the professor’s first year research assistants and a 4.0 student, Hannah Miller was a good student and a beautiful woman who happened to be the daughter of the university president, and Taylor was the book’s antagonist, especially to John. Unlike prior excursions, the group had failed to come up with a significant archeological discovery until the very last day, and then they did not have time to fully investigate it due to the need to get back to school for the fall term.

Away from the other student's digs, it was John and Professor Rutherford who found a skeleton buried at the bottom of a small cavern, and while they told the others about this discovery, Rutherford demanded that he keep secret what the skeleton had been holding in its hand, a heavy gold hockey puck-shaped item. It had undecipherable bumps and other markings. Rather than announce the discovery as was proper for any such archeological findings, Rutherford demanded that John keep this a secret. John knew that was improper, but he chose to honor his esteemed professor’s wish. Rutherford rationalized that he needed time to study and contemplate the device. Really, his initial plan was to sell the device on the black market for great profit, but then he simply could never part from the object. The first night that the golden puck was in his possession, he discovered that the puck caused him to experience what he called “time shifting.” He knew that John would not be able to keep the secret for long, so he chose to murder him on the island. However, Rutherford was befuddled when John did not stay murdered. It turned out to be an event that he kept reliving. It was recurring time shifting that was the essence of this novel.

The professor kept the talisman secret until he could no longer bear the burden of having it, and after insisting that John take it from him with a warning never to use it for time travel, Rutherford committed suicide. Because time travel was always backward, Rutherford and John found that time stood still, for them as they relived various events over and over. Life became entirely predictable, and there was no unknown future to be experienced. This was a good mystery and satisfied my appetite for a new time travel story. I think you’ll enjoy this unique take on time travel.

 

Dead Exit

 Dead Exit is the third book in the Marty and Bo Thriller Series. It was 14 months ago when I first ran across the author, Michael Balter. I wrote a review of the second book, The Vatican Deal which I highly praised, rating Balter up there with Daniel Silva, Dan Brown and Don Winslow. Dead Exit continued the trouble between the protagonists, Marty and Bo, and their antagonists, Natalya and the Russian oligarch Dmitry. Despite them being a couple, and despite being a married man with two children, Marty allowed himself to get sexually involved with Natalya. In the third book, Marty is continuing to struggle with his intense attachment to Natalya and although he has reconciled his marriage. Additionally, although it was Natalya who fronted the money they needed to create their own business empire, it was Dmitry’s limitless funds which they borrowed in order to buy more businesses.

Just like in the first book, they learned that one of their companies, 120 convenience stores were at the center of a Chinese and North Korean enterprise to smuggle counterfeit cigarettes throughout the United States. This was a billion-dollar enterprise, one which the Chinese and North Korean operators were not willing to let go. Meanwhile, they discovered that the FBI was in a deep investigation into this illegal activity. Although Bo and Marty were willing to help the FBI, their enemies threatened their lives and those of their families. Bo was at risk for having his prior affair with Natalya made public and he knew it would blow his marriage apart.

This was a fast-paced book with lots of intrigue between the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, and of course, the Americans. These are great and believable characters, and the plot kept me glued to the novel. The ending was not what I expected. Now, having fallen in love with Balter’s writing, I need to acquire the first book, Chasing Money, while waiting for his fourth novel.

The Last Mile

 David Baldacci, an incredibly prolific writer, has produced another captivating crime novel, The Last Mile. It is the second novel in a seven book series about protagonist Amos Decker who has joined an FBI special force although he is not officially an FBI employee. Decker was drawn to a specific case which mirrored his own earlier life. Melvin Mars had been convicted of murdering his parents and was sent to prison for his execution. After 20 years in death row, Decker was about to be executed when another man came forward to admit committing the murders. Both Decker and Mars were former college football players. Mars was an all-star who was headed for a big NFL contract and perhaps to become the best player in the league. They had played against each other in a big game, Decker with Ohio State and Mars with Alabama. Mars was a star that day and Decker was unable to stop him. After graduation Decker had made it to the NFL for just one play that resulted in his knee being destroyed. Both men had lost their families to brutal murders only to have someone else, many years later, claim that he had done the deed. Mars story had to be proven, and it was not known if the new confessions was an honest one. Mars’ case became more important when a woman on the FBI who was also working on Mars’ case was kidnapped. Surely, there were some ominous hidden truths hidden behind that kidnapping.

The story was rather complicated. There were lots of characters from both Decker’s and Mars’ early lives, as well as people they knew currently. What if Mars parents were really not dead? I thought this was a good story, one that clearly kept me interested to the very end. Both protagonists were strong and well-developed personalities. The Last Mile gets a strong recommendation from me.

The Radical Radiance of the Fishing Fly

                            THE RADICAL  RADIANCE

                            OF THE FISHING FLY

Lewis K Schrager is a playrwrite, and this is his first novel. He has already won awards for his short stories, and now he demonstrates his talents in a captivating full-length story. In The Radical Radiance of the Fishing Fly, he crafts a story about David agreeing to go on an Alaskan flyfishing outing with his older brother Larry. David and Larry never had a close relationship, even during their school days when Larry was not only a good athlete, but he was loud and obnoxious in all social gatherings. He seemed to always want to be the center of attention. When Larry would see David’s sense of disapproval for his behavior, Larry would only make it worse. Larry went on to become a successful business man, and David became a research physician at NIH. As adults, they had little to do with each other. Larry lived in Philadelphia where they were raised and David lived in Bethesda, Maryland, close to NIH.

Prior to the fishing trip together, David had come down with an advanced case of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Larry hated going to hospitals and seeing doctors, and he had refused to get evaluated for his worsening cough. However, when it was so severe he could barely breathe, he accepted David’s referral to a pulmonologist at Johns Hopkins. The cancer was diagnosed and radiation treatments were begun. Larry also underwent several sessions of chemotherapy, and about a year later, he was declared cancer-free.

It was Larry’s wife who suggested the fishing trip, something Larry loved and dreamed about during his treatment, but it David had never been interested in fishing. In thinking about the trip and their lifetime discomfort with each other, David wrote, “I realized that all this cogitation was irrelevant. Mellowed or not, I never would have agreed to go on this trip if not for Larry’s cancer.”

It took four plane flights to get from the airport in Philadelphia to their remote fishing experience in Alaska. It was a small group of fishermen and fisherwomen, which led to wonderfully developed characters and complicated interactions with one another. A passionate love story was part of the novel. During their travel to the fishing site, the group encountered a group of hunters, all of who were regressed to an early teen level of maturity. That provided a common enemy for the fishing group and provided worthy subplots for the author. Ultimately, this was a story about Larry struggling with his battle with cancer and his continued efforts at achieve a complete recovery, and a story about the brothers efforts at rapprochement.

Since I know nothing about fly fishing, I asked for some help from a neighbor who is an expert fly fisherman and who has taken many flyfishing trips to various continents. He enjoyed the story and gave me a technical review of the fly fishing described by the author. Perhaps the author could correct some technical flaws regarding casting, what flies to use, when to use a net, and what knots are used, but those changes would not impact the quality of this story. This was a very good novel and it gets a very strong 5/5 rating from me.

The Shadow Appears

 

                                                            The Shadow Appears

                                             by Burt Tyson

The Shadow Appears is the first of two books written by Burt Tyson. Before this, I have never read a novel of this subject matter. It’s a post Civil War novel and what makes it unique to me is that it is a heroic tale of a Confederate soldier. I only recall reading books in which the Union soldiers were the heroes and the southern Confederate soldiers were the enemy. Perhaps their soldier acts were done so with obvious bravery, but those actions were still being done by enemy forces. In this book, the protagonist is Captain Robert Hester, but rather than use his name, he asks the characters with whom he interacts as being just “Captain.” At the start of the story, the Captain is just being released from a Confederate hospital where he has been staying the last three months while covering from near fatal war injuries. The fall of the Confederacy was at hand, only weeks before Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Virginia. The Captain was sent, along with his assistant, Sergeant Turley, to provide protection for Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. I should clarify that I have no doubt that there were as man Confederacy heroes as there were Union heroes, and I have no doubt that the union forces, under Mosely and Sherman, caused many outrageous atrocities on their rampage through the south at the end of the war.

On his way to find President Davis, the Captain did a brief detour to stop by his own farm from which he had been away for a few years in the war effort. As he arrived, he saw the house was in flames, and the farm was being destroyed by Stoneman’s “bummers” who were actually Union forces who had been presumably sent by Stoneman to do whatever damage they could inflict on the homes and farms of southerners. From a hilltop, he saw his father shot, his sister killed, and the woman he planned to marry killed. Although the odds were two against 19, in a rage, the Captain and Turley killed them all. After burying his own loved ones, he swore that when he was done with his assignment for Davis, that he would kill as many Yankees as he could find. Although the Captain never did catch up with Davis, in the process of trying to find him, he ran across numbers of “bummers” and against overwhelming numbers, killed all of them. Meanwhile, he provided great help to the people who survived the slaughter by northern troops. Time and again, the Captain was told he was a great man who seemed to have divine protection.

Even after Appomattox, when other southerners were conceding victory by the Union, the Captain continued his intent to kill Yankees. He and Turley continued west and landed in Texas where he encountered yet more bad guys who he killed. Despite getting more serious wounds, he spared a village which was about to be attacked by Ramon Herrerra. It was Herrerra who would be called the Shadow for his evil actions towards anyone who disagreed with him. Ramon was described as follows, “He is like the shadow before el Diablo, first you see the shadow and then you see el Diablo. Perhaps we should call him La Sombre del Diablo, the Devil’s Shadow.” It was Ramon Herrerra who is bound to become the villain in the second novel by Tyson, The Shadow Appears.

I can see how this material would appeal to many, but it’s a bit too worshipful of the Captain who is a murderous force in his own right. The dialogue was quite repetitive regarding the remarkable battle skills and generosity of the Captain. Although I did finish this story, I don’t have a plan to read the second novel in the series.

Son of Nobody

 Perhaps the author of Son of Nobody could qualify as the most interesting man in the world. He is also the author of the amazing Life of Pi. I looked for my review of Life of Pi, but it was not in the blog, so who knows what happened to that. Son of Nobody has a very different feel, but I also think it addresses some of the same themes about self-worth, society, and identity. Also, I have a fascination with ancient Greek literature, and this novel dives directly into that. If you’ve got little interest in the Iliad, then you might struggle with this book even though that’s not really critical to see the author’s main them.

In the novel, the protagonist Harlow Donne is a classical scholar. Living in Canada, he had the chance go to England to look at some papyrus fragments at Oxford University, and he took the opportunity where he made the discovery of his life. The papyrus fragments were from an account of the Trojan War, a contemporary work to the Iliad by Homer. This book is historical fiction, but it’s also about the fictional author’s psychological journey about his own life. While he is at Oxford, Donne’s troubled marriage is further damaged and his little girl, Helen, has a brief and fatal illness. Like characters in his book, Donne was displaced from the place he lived but he was compelled to continue his seemingly important work.

Martel’s fictitious author Donne had previously never achieved any fame for his scholarly work. In Oxford, Donne translated the writings of the unknown author of the papyrus fragments which he named the Psoad. The author of those fragments was given the name Psoas, who was nothing  more than a common foot soldier with the Trojans, also a seemingly unimportant person. Thus, we actually have a protagonist writing about a protagonist. Rather than being a history book, this was really a story about a person who is defined without lineage or family history. In one review that I read, it was noted that Martel seemed to be asking, “If a person has no inherited story, must they invent one – and does that invention become truth?”

Most interestingly, in this newly discovered material that has been at the heart of so many dramas over the last couple millenias, Martel then invented areas in which the Iliad and Psoad describe events the same way and areas in which their accounts differed significantly. He even put Homer and Psoas at the same location on one day.

The Trojan-Greek war which lasted for 10 years is apparently a reality. The destruction of Troy left what must have been the wealthiest city in the world at the time in total ruin. Martel suggestsed that while true, the war itself was absurd from the perspective of both sides. The costs of the war were horrendous for both the Greeks and the Trojans, supposedly because of the abduction of Helen, which may not have been an abduction at all. It’s my plan to read this book again at a future date. I think this is a very well-written and important novel.