The Persian A novel

Persian Jewish dentist Kamran "Kam" Esfahani, the protagonist of this taut political thriller from McCloskey (The Seventh Floor), is counting down the days until he has enough money to leave Sweden for sunny California. So when Arik Glitzman, head of the Mossad's Caesarea Division, offers to pay him a fortune to sow chaos in Iran, he can't say no. Trading the monotony of dentistry for the perils of espionage, he runs a sham dental practice in Tehran as a cover for smuggling weapons and conducting surveillance. Meanwhile, Glitzman hunts a terrorist network targeting Jews in Israel. Complications ensue when Kam enlists double agent Roya Shabani, a widow bent on avenging her Iranian scientist husband who was killed by the Mossad, to help in his mission. As loyalties blur and the mission unravels, Kam lands in prison, and much of the novel is framed as his final confession. Intricately plotted and populated with multidimensional characters whose complicated motives drive them to desperation, the novel deftly balances geopolitical tensions and human stakes. Fans of John le Carré will have a tough time putting this down. Agent: Lisa Erbach Vance, Aaron M. Priest Literary. (Sept.)

In the latest novel by former CIA analyst McCloskey, a Swedish Jewish dentist of Iranian origins who becomes a Mossad operative in Tehran faces death after his capture by the enemy. How Kamran Esfahani became part of a covert unit responsible for kidnappings, arms smuggling, and assassinations in Iran is laid out in the confession he is forced to write over and over by his chief torturer, known only as the General. Protective of crucial secrets, the confession takes the form of a novel within the novel, covering Kam's recruitment by Israeli intelligence officer Arik Glitzman and his training in Albania. "Steady dental or surgical hands, it turns out, are quite useful for picking locks and capturing crystal-clear photographs on a wide range of subminiature cameras," Kam writes. But other skills are required to recruit an Iranian woman whose husband was killed by Mossad and to elude the Jew-targeting Qods Force. With its snarky tone and its conflicted protagonist's California dreams, McCloskey's novel is reminiscent of Viet Thanh Nguyen'sThe Sympathizer (2015). Musing on Glitzman's comments about assassination-assigned Israeli forces "killing to save lives," Kam writes, "Why not fuck for chastity while you're at it?" But the humor is swept aside by a horrific drone attack on a Mossad couple's Jerusalem apartment and the severed head of a suicide-bombing Palestinian boy "rocket[ing]" through a salon window. Responding to Glitzman's claim that the Israelis never put a target's family in danger, his opposite number, Col. Ghorbani, says, "How about the thousands of Palestinian women and children you've bombed or shot or starved?" In probing the deep moral and practical complexities of this shadow war, McCloskey's novel could not be more timely or unsettling, all humor aside. A sometimes shocking, sometimes mocking look at the Israeli-Iranian conflict. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.