Ex-CIA analyst David McCloskey burst onto the espionage fiction scene with his debut Damascus Station. That book followed the exploits of a CIA analyst in Syria in the 2010s. McCloskey followed that up with two novels set in the same universe and revolving around the exploits of the CIA (Moscow X and The Seventh Floor). With his latest book, The Persian, McCloskey stays very much in the world of cloak and dagger but moves away from his previous CIA-based American-centrism to shine a light on the ongoing war between agents of Iran and agents of Israel.
The Persian opens with the assassination of an Iranian scientist by Israel by a remotely controlled drone a few years before the present. The narrative then moves forward to the present day and a man called Kamran Esfahani who has been held in as prisoner and tortured for the previous three years. Kamran is asked, not for the first time, to write his story (in crayon so he has no opportunity to harm himself). The majority of the book is this ‘true confession’ (although he admits early on that he is not telling the whole truth). But this confession provides context for the additional points-of-view of Kamran’s Mossad handler Arik Glitzman and the wife of the murdered scientist who ends up working for the same shadowy group that her husband did.
This is the set up and there are plenty of twists and turns to it as the story progresses. In some ways The Persian hits a few of the same beats as Damascus Station. The main character, Kamran is a Jewish Iranian whose family left the country for Sweden. He is approached by Glitzman who wants him to return to Iran and set up a dental practice as a front to support Israeli covert operations there. Kamran agrees not so much out of conviction but because he dreams of earning enough money from this work to move to California. Kamran is trained in spycraft, which he turns out to be pretty good at, to the point where he is asked to run his own agent in Iran. But then Kamran makes the mistake of developing feelings for the Iranian agent that he is running.
The most fascinating aspect of The Persian is McCloskey’s view of the silent but deadly war between Israeli and Iranian secret services. In particular, the way both are able to use radicalised locals in the opposing country to unwittingly support their cause. But also the use of new technologies to enable remote methods of assassination. As with his other books, McCloskey provides plenty of insight into spycraft but without overburdening the reader with exposition.
The Persian is another great espionage story from McCloskey. In stepping away from the American secret service he shines a light two other intelligence services and their long running antagonism. And he does this, as always, with a cast of extremely grey characters and a page-turning plot.
The Persian
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