Bride of a Bygone War

Bride of a Bygone War is an engaging look at the long Lebanese civil war in the early 1980s. Focused around a young CIA case officer, Conrad Prosser, the story introduces the readers to a little known (to Westerners) war that had great consequences to the United States in 1983 with the suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. While a fictional story, Bride has the feel of an insider’s look behind the curtain of secrecy and complexity of the multiple players in the region.

Conrad is reporting to Walter Lukash, the senior case officer, who has additional problems, behind trying to avoid getting the US involved in the civil war. Years before his current assignment, Walter had secretly married a Lebanese woman (from a prominent family heavily involved in the civil war) and then abandoned her, causing a great deal of reluctance to return to the scene of the crime so to speak. And along with him this trip, comes his Irish girl-friend, whom the CIA considers a security risk, but Walter is unwilling to end the relationship. Add in the actual civil war going on around them and Conrad and Walter have plenty to contend with.

Beyond the personalities and people that author Preston Fleming writes about, it is the setting that really shines. The descriptions of the city and the surrounding countryside, along with the ebb and flow of daily life really make Bride shine outside of the conventional spy thriller.