The Sparrow and the Peacock

This book won an Edgar for "Best First Novel by an American Author" and was on the best book of the year lists for NPR and The New Yorker. Author "I.S. Berry spent six years as an operations officer for the CIA, serving in wartime Baghdad and elsewhere. She has lived and worked throughout Europe and the Middle East, including two years in Bahrain during the Arab Spring" (author's website). 

Here is the laudatory review from Publishers Weekly with a brief plot summary. "Berry's stint as a CIA officer lends a palpable veracity to this outstanding debut thriller. In 2012, 52-year-old CIA veteran Shane Collins is assigned to Bahrain's capital city of Manama during the Arab Spring uprisings there. His career is circling the drain, but his young station chief, Whitney Mitchell, is a star on the rise. In order to collect information that proves Iran is fueling the local revolution, Collins has riskily embedded a local agent in a volatile rebel group. Then Collins attends a gala where he's struck by a massive mosaic and again by the beautiful artist who created it, Almaisa. Shane begins a lengthy pursuit of Almaisa, and before long, he's juggling new love, a budding conscience about his work, and bloody complications with his revolutionary informant. The plot's many twists will captivate readers, and Berry's gorgeous prose is its own reward, with echoes of Le Carré and Graham Greene..."

I wasn't engrossed in the book, not the plot, not the characters. But the author certainly captures the setting well and offers insights into procedural espionage tactics to a greater degree than in most spy novels.