One of the hottest flashpoints in the world today is the Middle East. Iraq is, of course, for most Americans, the hottest area. But Iraq is closely followed by the Israel-Jordan-Palestine region, which is where the bulk of Dan Fesperman's The Amateur Spy and the dramatic action takes place. Smaller, but no less important segments of the book take place on a Greek island, and in the Washington, D.C., area.
Another eight years and it will be a century since the longest and bloodiest chapter in modern world history came into being with the signing of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. This secret agreement conflicted with an earlier agreement which enlisted the help of the Arabs in World War One, the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence. Sykes-Picot and Hussein-McMahon were both products of diplomatic scrambling by the British government during the darkest of that period of the war. At the risk of oversimplification, the first agreement promised the Arabs certain areas of the Middle East in exchange for their help in Britain’s war against the Axis. Sykes-Picot then promised some of those same areas as a Jewish homeland, in exchange for the assistance of influential Jews in the United States in bringing the US into the war. I want to emphasize that this paragraph is a gross oversimplification, and the Middle East is an area in which you should do your own study, and form your own conclusions, if you’re interested. And considering the number of lives and dollars that area of the world has cost the U.S., and continues to cost and otherwise affect the US and the entire rest of the world, every citizen of planet Earth should be interested.
The events of the past nearly hundred years as briefly described above are the background and basis of The Amateur Spy. They’re not necessary for a thorough enjoyment of a good read, but they do put a lot of things into their proper context and perspective. The book’s beginning and later events also exemplify the words of the poet (John Lennon): “Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”
The novel opens with a couple making a trip to their retirement home on the island of Karos, in the Cyclades, off the coast of Greece. They’re in that home for less than 24 hours when their forced adventure begins, and the husband, Freeman, is un-retired and put to work as a spy. His lack of experience in spying becomes the book’s title and the theme of the story. How he’s forced into spying, what led up to it and what transpires afterward make the main story. There’s also a back story that’s connected to Freeman’s, and it all comes to a dramatic conclusion at — where else? — the end. The adventure, and there’s plenty of it, weaves into and out of the story throughout the book, while intricately and inexorably connecting the two stories and their final intersection.
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