Did not finish; d/c after 80 pages. Syrian Civil War, CIA operatives as good guys. ( )

This is a gritty spy novel set in the early days of the still unresolved Syrian civil war. It's the CIA versus the Assad dictatorship. The CIA characters are the good guys and the Syrians are bad and nasty. There's plenty of violence and cruelty on display as the Syrians seem to self-destruct as the story progresses. Sam Joseph, a CIA operative, is the protagonist from whose point of view the story is told. As the story opens Sam is sent to Syria to "exfiltrate" a Syrian defector and a CIA colleague: things do not go well but Sam manages to escape to fight another day. He is assigned to recruit a high-ranking Syrian official, Miriam Haddad, to provide intelligence to the CIA on the Assad regime's plans. This takes Sam back to Damascus via Paris and the south of France, with lots of local colour provided for readers to enjoy.

The story has an authentic feel to it: there's plenty of spy tradecraft on display. There's an annoying use of acronyms, some defined but most are left to the reader to figure out.

A good read for fans of espionage fiction. ( )

The first thing you see when you pick up this book is an endorsement from General David Petraeus, ‘The best spy novel I have ever read’. I would like to respectfully suggest that reading-wise General David Petraeus should get out a bit more. Although the ecstatic reception in many of the books pages suggests that perhaps the problem is more with me. Ploughing on: this is intermittently gripping and the climax is riveting, but some of the characterisation lacks the depth and credibility that one would find in both Le Carré or Greene, both of whom have been mentioned as valid comparisons. The writing has also been over-praised. It’s functional more than anything. When McCloskey does attempt to be lyrical or poignant he falters. I could go on - how believable is the central love story? It’s very reminiscent of the one in the brilliant Canal Plus drama by Eric Rochant, 'Le Bureau des Légendes' but it works in that series more than anything because of the fantastic acting and skilful plotting. I didn’t really buy it here. ( )

Have to say this is one of the best Spy Novels that I’ve ever read.
It’s hard to believe that this is a debut Novel.
It really has everything from the Storyline to the absolute knowledge of espionage that David Acquired during his time with the CIA.
I Look forward to reading his next one soon. ( )

Remember a time when the CIA was seen as either the bad guys or at best morally complicated? Back in the Seventies, post-Watergate, if the CIA put in an appearance in a book or film, they were almost never the guys in the white hats. Times have changed, people have moved on, and a former CIA officer like David McCloskey can write a novel that portrays the men and women of the CIA as white knights.

Damascus Station is, however, a good story, if a bit more morally ambiguous than the author would have us believe. Set during the early period of the Syrian Civil War it tells the story of a CIA agent who is tasked with recruiting a young woman who, for some reason, sits in a position of power in the Assad regime but is believed to be recruitable. To turn her into a CIA spy, he seduces her. End of story.

But that’s not how the story actually runs. Instead, he falls in love with her and breaks CIA rules that forbid him from sleeping with a “asset”. Because, you know, white knights would never do stuff like that.

In case anyone missed the point, the Acknowledgments section is full of praise for the CIA, dedicated to its noble and brave men and women. A sequel is coming out this fall, set in Putin’s Russia. My guess is that once again the brave Americans from Langley will save the world. ( )

I think it should be said that although this is an espionage novel, it is based on actual facts relating to events back in the early 1960's. When reading it it helps not to take sides, either with the protagonist, spying for Israel, or the Syrian government counter-intelligence people who try to expose him. ( )

A great page turner and the intelligence techniques described and the details of life in Syria are fascinating. Some of the author's sentence constructions are a little hard to parse on first reading but things move along at such a fast clip that this is easy to overlook. ( )

David McCloskey's Damascus Station is an authoritative (more about this later) spy novel with well-drawn and interesting characters, a taut plot, and passable dialog. The setting is mostly Damascus, and the reader is given a graphic description of the horrors of the Syrian Civil War, of the tyranny of the security forces and the blood thirsty cruelty of Assad and his generals and cronies.
We are told at https://www.davidmccloskeybooks.com that "David McCloskey is a former CIA officer and 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." With a background like that I assume that the techniques and equipment used by the characters are valid, authentic. There is one technique, though, that challenged that assumption but not my credulity. When a technician tested an explosive device to determine if it would not cause "collateral damage," a peculiar scenario was set up: "Four technicians wheeled cadavers on Rollerblades out of the hangar toward the street mock-up, their body weight suspended on what Paulina always assumed were IV poles. ... then connected the IV pole to a long length of rope that would be pulled during the test to simulate a human walking. ... the cadaver playing the part of Ali was actually a sixty-year-old male named Darryl who'd died of a heart attack. ... There was a whump ... Darryl's head vanished and his shoulders and chest shredded into ropes of flesh."
I'll never know if this was from McCloskey's dark imagination or his experience. It's believable, though, based on what I do know about a government (of whichever party) that reverts to assassination repeatedly and thus would find little space in their moral construct for respect for the dead.