If I could give this book a zero, I would. As a Syrian Christian myself, I am utterly disappointed with how McCloskey’s world-building and cultural sensitivity stopped at a smattering of Arabic slang and stereotypes that cater to harmful perspectives held by some of his Western audience. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Stuffed with insider insights … It reveals some top-notch intelligence tradecraft’ – Tim Shipman, Sunday Times

Ultimately, I was interested in telling an authentic story: one that described the actual CIA, its tradecraft and operations and the real Syrian war. The story came to life as I wrote. Over time — and this was not obvious at the beginning, by the way — it became clear that the relationship between Sam and Mariam was this story’s emotional core. Their relationship provided a lens for the operations, the intrigue and the civil war. The novel became their story.

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David McCloskey is a former CIA analyst whose writing bears the stamp of authenticity, and the book has received much praise by former Agency personnel. It was a finalist for the International Thriller Writers’ Best First Novel Award in 2022. Narrator Andrew Wehrlen is described as having a strong, friendly and confident voice, and he uses it to make Sam Joseph a convincing American character. At the same time, he manages to create distinctive voices for the many Syrian characters as well. David McCloskey is a former CIA analyst … the book is energised by his own experience’– The Times Best Books of 2023 So Far Reading this book, I couldn’t help reflecting on the subsequent devastation that Syria’s civil war wreaked on her people. The multiple opposing forces and brutal authorities are all here in this fictional version of the conflict’s early days. Of course, this isn’t history, it’s fiction, but I feel like I understood the history a little better for having read it. The real-life political machinations of this confusing, multi-sided conflict make Damascus Station that much more compelling. Q: The bipolar nature of the Agency never ceased to amaze: CIA had the ability to find and kill a person in the remote Hindu Kush, and on the other hand he couldn’t find a working stapler at Langley.

This is a well-balanced story, filled with plenty of action and intrigue, dangerous situations, and the ever-present violence that was (and still is) Syria in the 2010s. But there are also thought-provoking scenes, moral dilemmas, and a compelling romance. Absolutely riveting all the way through. A well-educated woman named Miriam, a Syrian general’s daughter, secretly opposes the government that employs her. Miriam’s cousin Razan makes no effort to hide her disdain for the Syrian president. She gets away with it because her father has a position in the government that allows him to shield her. I’m an avid reader of the genre and I am sure many of its leading lights have influenced me in some way: le Carré, McCarry, Deighton, Clancy, Greene, Cruz Smith, Higgins, Forsyth, the list could go on. More recently people like David Ignatius, Jason Matthews, Daniel Silva and Alex Berenson come to mind. One aspect of the genre — though by no means important to every author writing in it — that has influenced my work is the tension between moral clarity and moral ambiguity permeating so much of the intelligence business. I love stories that have good guys and bad guys while at the same time entertaining the gray areas. I like the complexity and the ambiguity that come with the intrigue, and I hope to carry that through in my novels.” Damascus Station is simply marvellous storytelling… a stand-out thriller and essential reading for fans of the genre’– Financial TimesBut the cat and mouse chase for the killer soon leads to a trail of high-profile assassinations and the discovery of a dark secret at the heart of the Syrian regime, bringing the pair under the all-seeing eyes of Assad’s spy catcher, Ali Hassan, and his brother Rustum, the head of the feared Republican Guard. A: Not sure, actually. I’d heard this mentioned in the Langley rumor mill, but I think the truth may have been lost in the mists of the early Cold War.”

Miriam is the kind of character a reader might love, as well. She’s intelligent, a fierce warrior, and willing to take risks to fight the leaders she serves. Sam is your prototypical spy, stalwart and loyal and an all-around good guy apart from his inability to keep it in his pants. My favorite character might be the tough chief of station in Damascus. She’s vulgar, lethal with a shotgun, and proclaims herself (with some justification) to be the Angel of Death. McCloskey’s next book is another spy novel, centered on the next stage of the U.S.-Russia spy war: “It’s not a sequel to Damascus Station , but it’s in the same universe, so some characters will reappear.”

Mr. McCloskey, who grew up in Minnesota and studied international relations, worked as a political analyst in CIA headquarters and from field stations in the Middle East. The rebels are planning a spectacular last-ditch effort to turn the tide. The Mossad is getting restless. The Russians have been called in. Sam Joseph has a strategy, but since it includes withholding a lot of information from his own station chief, it is beginning to seem questionable at best. Good tradecraft is important – but what if the other side’s is better?

The principal antagonists in this novel are the men and women of the CIA and the senior-most figures in Assad’s intelligence apparatus, the mukhabarat, as well as the dictator himself. But others get into the act, too, including Russian intelligence, an Israeli spy, and the jihadist rebels in Syria. The action centers on the CIA station in the basement of the US Embassy in Damascus. But the story wanders to and from Washington, DC, and to France and Italy as well.It is a dazzling debut and comes from a place of great personal knowledge. McCloskey himself covered Syria as a CIA analyst from 2008 to 2014, living and working in field stations throughout the region and briefing officials in Washington. An astonishingly accomplished debut that masterfully mixes action, tradecraft lore, a grown-up Romeo and Juliet story and bags of untold intelligence about the conflict’– John Dugdale, The Times Best Thriller Books of 2023 Author David McCloskey was a Syria specialist for the CIA for six years. He knows whereof he writes in this novel about espionage in Syria. Damascus Station is filled with the acronyms and jargon that officers of the agency, like employees throughout the government, throw around so casually. Employees of the Agency are officers, never “agents.” Spies recruited within Syria are “assets,” or, rarely, agents. He describes in detail the techniques Sam uses in his two tours in Syria to avoid detection. And he introduces us to gadgets developed by the CIA’s Technical Services Division that would make James Bond’s Q salivate with envy. The book comes across as a primer on tradecraft. Damascus Station is an extremely effective modern espionage novel, filled with action and incident but also a profound knowledge of the people and factions of Syria, the complex maneuvers of spycraft, the gray areas, competing egos and overlapping priorities that make every day a journey through the minefield. DAZZLING DEBUT STEMS FROM DISTINCT EXPERIENCES