THE AMATEUR SPY: DAN FESPERMAN

Another spy novel, a first time read of a Fesperman novel, set in both Greece and the Middle East in the 1990's. The novel's protagonist, Freeman  Lockhart, has retired,  to a Greek Island, with his Bosnian wife, Mila.  On there first night in their new Greek home, three men, in masks, invade the home, take Freeman away to a safe house, and blackmail him into working for them for the next three months in Amman, Jordan, where they suspect an old friend of Freeman's, a Palestinian, is skimming money from charity to fund Palestinian causes.  They use an incident from Freeman's past in Africa, where he worked for AID and was coerced by a warlord into taking money but in a good cause.  He feels he has no choice but to do what he's told, goes to Amman, ends up working with his friend, Omar, and gets mixed up in the politics of various factions, like Hamas, the CIA, and the Israeli intelligence, Mossad.

A parallel story involves a well know Palestinian surgeon, an American citizen, Abbas Rahim and his wife Aliyah.  She begins to suspect that her husband is suffering from depression but discovers, through his email, that because of the death of their daughter, blamed on security measures against Arabs, he has become a terrorist and plans on setting off an underground bomb as various senators and other higher ups, attend a funeral of a well known politician.  In her attempts to foil his plot, bring back his sanity, she pretends to support him, and flies to Amman to meet her husband's contacts.  She realizes. however, she's there just to avoid complicating her husband's plot.  She then looks for ways of stopping the plot, gets imprisoned by her husband's group, but escapes, returns home and convinces her husband, as he is ready to set off the bomb, to stop. Whew!  Sounds like Homeland.

Meanwhile Freeman realizes that he's not working for the CIA, the US  but for Mossad, the Israelis. He tells Omar the truth, realizes that Omar, too, is being used by the Israelis.  Freeman meanwhile has met Aliyah, finds out the truth about her husband's plot, tries to convince the CIA about its truth but no one will listen to him, the final irony.  He ends up leaving Amman, and reunites with his wife in Boston.  They will not be going back to Greece soon we assume.  Readable but somewhat silly and coincidental.