Book Review: ‘Lion of Babylon’

By Sidney W. Frost

Guest Reviewer

This story is about what happens after Marc Royce, a former State Department agent involved in covert operations, is called back into service in Baghdad to find his best friend Alex Baird, a CIA agent, who has disappeared.

In addition to his friend, there are two women missing, Claire Reeves, a nurse, and Hannah Brimsley, a volunteer at a church in the Green Zone. Farouk El-waziri, the son of a prominent Iraqi family who knew the three Americans is also missing. Marc had been forced out of his job as a State Department operative because he had insisted on being with his wife when she was terminally ill.

The story begins three years after her death and Marc is working in Baltimore as a forensic accountant when his former boss, Ambassador Walton comes to urge him back into service. This is also the story of Sameh el-Jacobi, an Iraqi lawyer who is a member of the Syrian Christian Church in Baghdad.

Although the book is fiction, I had a feeling that the author had been to post-Saddam Iraq or had done a great deal or research about the setting. What he says about the people and the place rings true. I liked the inside look at what it is like to live and work in Baghdad after the fall of Hussein.

I also learned more about Iraq and its history. I was surprised to learn about the Christians in Iraq.

This was the first book by Davis Bunn that I’ve read, but I now understand why he won three Christy awards and is a bestselling author of more than six million copies.

A note from Davis:

Lion of Babylon is Book 1 in the Marc Royce stories. Book 2, Rare Earth, releases July 1, 2012, from Bethany House Publishers.

Here’s the video trailer for Rare Earth — let me know what you think of it.