The books are strange hybrids: top-selling pulp-fiction vehicles that also serve as intelligence drop boxes for spy agencies around the world. espionage series at the rate of four or five books a year for nearly 50 years. The book was the latest by Gérard de Villiers, an 83-year-old Frenchman who has been turning out the S.A.S. “It really gave you a sense of the atmosphere inside the regime, of the way these people operate, in a way I hadn’t seen before.” “It was prophetic,” I was told by one veteran Middle East analyst who knows Syria well and preferred to remain nameless. And most striking of all, it described an attack on one of the Syrian regime’s command centers, near the presidential palace in Damascus, a month before an attack in the same place killed several of the regime’s top figures. It detailed a botched coup attempt secretly supported by the American and Israeli intelligence agencies. Set in the midst of Syria’s civil war, the book offered vivid character sketches of that country’s embattled ruler, Bashar al-Assad, and his brother Maher, along with several little-known lieutenants and allies. Unlike most paperbacks, though, this one attracted the attention of intelligence officers and diplomats on three continents.

Last June, a pulp-fiction thriller was published in Paris under the title “Le Chemin de Damas.” Its lurid green-and-black cover featured a busty woman clutching a pistol, and its plot included the requisite car chases, explosions and sexual conquests.

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