In the following email interview, writer Howard Kaplan discusses his new political espionage thriller To Destroy Jerusalem (paperback, Kindle), the third in his loosely-connected series of stand-alone spy novels that also includes Bullets Of Palestine and The Spy’s Gamble.
Four years ago, when I interviewed political espionage writer Howard Kaplan for the first time, it was because his first novel, The Damascus Cover, was being rereleased after forty years to coincide with the news that a movie version was in the works.
A year later, when we spoke again, it was because his third novel, Bullets Of Palestine, was also being reissued.
But in the following email interview about his new book, The Spy’s Gamble (paperback, Kindle), Kaplan explains that it’s not a new version of an old novel, but is instead a brand-new story he wrote in this current decade.
Just as most science fiction authors have never been to outer space, most writers of espionage novels have never done any spying. Well, except maybe on their older siblings.
But that’s not the case with Howard Kaplan, who’s not only the author of the recently rereleased ’80s spy novel Bullets Of Palestine (paperback, digital), but he also, as he puts it, “smuggled manuscripts out of the Soviet Union.”
With Bullets Of Palestine newly back in print, I spoke to Agent Kaplan about its plot, the upcoming movie of his previously rereleased spy novel The Damascus Cover, and what else he has planned for his “Jerusalem Spy” series.
Nearly forty years after it was first published, Howard Kaplan’s spy novel The Damascus Cover is making a comeback. Not only is a new edition coming to both bookshelves and eReaders, but a movie adaptation that stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Abigail Spenser, and Jurgen Prochnow is slated for next year.
But in talking to Kaplan about both, it becomes clear that his tale of espionage hasn’t aged a day.