Lion Eyes almost named one of the 100 best books of the year!

Reading Lion Eyes, you really need to concentrate. There is a lot going on. So practise now, before you run out and buy the book. Focus. Pay attention. This will take some explaining: Claire Berlinski, the author of Lion Eyes, is also the author of one previous fictional work, Loose Lips, a romantic and satirical novel about a young female CIA agent. Most of the reviews for this book focused on the question of whether Claire Berlinski, the author, was in fact a CIA agent herself. Critics wrote, "This looks like an insider's account," and, "Did Berlinski dip her toe into the Central Intelligence Agency?" That kind of thing.

Narrated with verve and élan, Berlinski's sly second thriller flirts more with romance than danger. During the hot summer of 2003, a Paris-based American novelist named Claire Berlinski gets into an online affair with a Persian archeologist who may be a spy.

Rarely is a book such a superb read that as soon as I complete it, I rush to locate anything the author has previously written. Lion Eyes is the tale of a fictional Claire Berlinski, who, like the author, lives in Paris and has written one prior book, Loose Lips. Her first novel was the tale of a young female CIA agent.

Before you crack open a novel, you usually know the author and you've got a pretty good idea who the main character will be.

The dust jacket is, after all, our friend.

But in the case of author Claire Berlinski, we never quite know if she's the main character as well as the author.

"I write fiction — and trust me: there is always some intersection between what you write and the truth."

This observation becomes a not-so-inconspicuous thread through Claire Berlinski's latest novel, Lion Eyes, in which Berlinski herself is the protagonist. After the publication of her previous spy novel, Loose Lips, critics noted an alarming accuracy in Berlinski's observations of the CIA, leaving more than one reader wondering how much of the novel was indeed fiction.

Claire Berlinski deftly blends comedy, intrigue, and romance in Lion Eyes, her second novel, a cleverly constructed story about self-delusion and betrayal. According to a short preface, the plot was inspired by an extended e-mail correspondence with an admirer of Loose Lips, Berlinski's first novel, about a female CIA trainee. Lion Eyes, she explains, is an attempt to reconstruct, "to my own satisfaction, how I, an intelligent, well-educated, professional woman in my thirties," became "powerfully in the thrall" of a man who, as it turned out, was not whom she imagined him to be.

Reality and fiction mesh gracefully in this inventive follow-up to Berlinski's first novel, Loose Lips (2003). A fictional Claire Berlinski is the heroine of this tale, living in Paris after the publication of Loose Lips. When she gets an e-mail from a man named Arsalan who wants to order her book, she impulsively sends him a copy.

Claire Berlinski's first novel, Loose Lips, garnered lots of attention for its inside views of the CIA and a heroine who, one critic wrote, "would make the 'Sex and the City' girls proud." Now, in a sequel of sorts, Berlinski gives us Lion Eyes, a novel about a writer named Claire, who recently published a book called Loose Lips. It may sound like a Borgesian fish-swallowing-its-own-tail kind of story, but once you stop trying to figure out what's real and what's fiction, you'll find yourself sliding comfortably into this engaging new novel.