The Iraq War is a raging storm of blood and violence, the Service is fighting for its survival on and off the battlefield, and an Iranian diplomat in Paris reaches out to a retired spy.
Enter Owen Roberts, a young, idealistic spy who joins the Service after 9/11 to make a difference. After a tour in Baghdad, he is assigned to an off-the-books operation that plans to steal the Iranian diplomat from underneath the Agency's nose and bring glory to the Service.
During his first year on the street, Owen gets in over his head as he tries to recruit the hard-drinking Iranian lothario and capture a Hezbollah terrorist. It's a tough task for a young officer, where things never work out how they should, and where innocence is always the first thing to go. Owen discovers that the Schoolhouse has taught him how to be a spy, but not about the hard lessons that come afterward. It is the street that provides the answers to the big lessons in life: lessons about loyalty, betrayal, and courage, and about friends who are enemies and enemies who are friends.
In Richard Snyder's debut spy thriller, we learn that The Clandestine Education of Owen Roberts is a tale of self-discovery. But it's more than just one man's story; it's about the grand arc of espionage, how history never lets go of the present, how the injustices and demons of the past are always with us, lurking beneath the surface, ready to pull us down into the darkness. Along the way, we see Owen's humor, cynicism, and boyish wonderment as he fights in the bare-knuckled arena of espionage. Owen and his comrades and enemies operate in a sphere of deceit and self-delusion, creating paths of destruction wherever they go. No one is ever safe in this world.
