Damascus Station, McCloskey - B+

        This is a superb spy thriller set in Damascus a decade ago. It is a debut novel by a former CIA agent based in the Middle East. It is very, very good. Sam loses a colleague, Val, in Damascus, but like everyone else working for the US, he is not overly concerned because she had a diplomatic passport. Unfortunately for Val, the passport did not help, as the Syrians murdered her in custody. The man responsible for that crime is targeted and will be killed. Sam is tasked with recruiting a young woman, daughter of a minister, whom they suspect may have her doubts. Mariam winds up working for Sam and the CIA, although in the middle of her recruitment, she and Sam wind up in bed. She soon proceeds to provide Damascus Station with pure gold. At about the half-way point in the novel, the story gets very complicated, stretches one's imagination a bit, and finishes in sequential scenes of both individual and city-wide violence. Nonetheless, the book excels at tradecraft revelations and gives insightful specifics of the hell that is the civil war in Syria.