Lion Eyes

Claire Berlinski (the real Claire Berlinski, that is) wrote Loose Lips, the best (and certainly the funniest) contemporary novel about the CIA. Of course, that never meant she was the greatest spy of her generation.

When a fictional spy novelist named Claire Berlinski, who lives in Paris, begins exchanging e-mails with an Iranian archeologist who likes her work, she thinks nothing of it. Lots of people like spy novels. Lots of people meet online. Lots of people flirt online.

But when Claire visits Istanbul at the suggestion of this charming Persian, whom she calls the Lion, she finds herself, to her astonishment, in the thick of a real espionage novel. As life begins menacingly to imitate art, Claire discovers that the Lion is not who she thinks he is. And the Lion discovers that Claire is not who he thinks she is, either.