Blowback: A Thriller (Scot Horvath #4) by Brad Thor

Based on some dubious assumptions

Published by Pocket Books in 2006.

Brad Thor's thriller Blowback delivers as far as the international thrills and chills go. Main character Scot Harvath is a counter-terrorism expert on the tail of an Al-Qaeda operative who catches wind of something new - a plague that is being resurrected from the ancient past to be used against all non-Muslims.

Harvath pursues his leads across Europe and the Middle East - that part is lots of fun. I have issues with Thor's treatment of Muslims and his main thesis.

**SPOILER ALERT**

Every Muslim in the book, with the exception of two, is either a brazen hypocrite or a crazed religious fanatic. One of the good Muslim is killed by the virus being spread the fanatics and the other is shot by the hypocrites. There are literally dozens of Muslims in the book - and only two are decent people?

Thor's book rests on the premise that the Ottoman Empire is trying to resurrect itself by using fanatics like Al-Qaeda and the Wahhabis to weaken modern Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia. The problem with that is this: most Muslims openly hated the Ottoman government. Why? The Sultan (head of the secular government) also gave himself the title of Caliph (head of the religious structure). That is a giant no-no in Islam - Islam must not be subservient to a government. Also, there was a bit of ethnic dislike thrown in since the Ottomans were Turks and there has often been a pro-Arab stance in Al-Qaeda and the Wahhabis.

****END OF SPOILERS****

So, great thrills marred by laughable conspiracy and hopeless stereotyping of Muslims.

I give this one 3 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on February 21, 2007.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts over the last 30 days

THE GILDED AGE: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Image
Published in 2019 by Hourly History. What is popularly known as The Gilded Age (roughly from 1870 to 1900) was more than just an era of ostentatious wealth contrasted with crushing poverty. It was mostly a time if immense cultural and technological change and could easily be considered the beginnings of the modern world. This short e-book does a first-rate job of giving the broad strokes of the amazing breadth of changes - changes to communication with the telephone, to transportation with the increased number of trains, but also with the invention of the automobile. Steel became a common construction material and the first skyscraper was built.  None of this industrialization came smoothly, though. The United States went from being an overwhelmingly agrarian society where people worked on family farms or plantations (free, slave, or sharecropper) to being mostly working at paid positions in factories, stores, etc.  On top of that, a record amount of immigrants came to th...
Read more

BATMAN - ONE BAD DAY: CLAYFACE (graphic novel) by Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing

Image
Published by DC Comics in 2023. Written by Collin Keely and Jackson Lanzing. Art by Xermánico and Romulo Fajardo, Jr. Synopsis Clayface has moved away from Gotham City and has gone to Hollywood to be a movie star. The original Clayface character from 1940 comic where he premiered was a B movie actor named Basil Karlo. Basil Karlo is working as a waiter in Batman - One Bad Day: Clayface while trying to make it big in Hollywood. He's diligent about everything, but he does not have a light comic touch that is called for in romantic comedies. His roommate does, however. When they both read for the same part it becomes a problem when the roommate gets the part and Basil Karlo doesn't. Being Clayface means you can make yourself look like anyone - at least for a little while. Clayface kills the roommate and then assumes his shape so he can get his big Hollywood break. And then one murder leads to another. And another. And another. And another and so on. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is in t...
Read more

BOUND for CANAAN: THE EPIC STORY of the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, AMERICA'S FIRST CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (audiobook) by Fergus Bordewich

Image
Published by Harper Audio. Read by the author, Fergus Bordewich. Duration: 5 hours, 29 minutes. Abridged. The abridged version of Bound for Canaan hits the highlights of the Underground Railroad movement, but leaves quite a bit out. This is a radically abridged audiobook - fourteen hours of a nineteen hour audiobook were cut out - more than 70% of the book. I did not realize how much it had been abridged until I had already listened to it. What remains is solid, but more of traditional hero study. The reader learns about the Quakers, Levi Coffin and Harriet Tubman and a few other stalwarts of the movement. Frederick Douglass shows up as an example of the Underground Railroad in action. There is a nod to the importance of women in the movement and how that led to the Women's Suffrage movement.  The book goes off track a bit when it comes to John Brown of Bleeding Kansas fame. Brown did participate in the Underground Railroad movement, but the book follows him to the Kansas and the ...
Read more

COMMEMORATIVE HISTORY of the GEORGE ROGERS CLARK BICENTENNIAL EXHIBIT by The Indiana State Museum

Image
Published in 1976 by the Indiana State Museum Society. 1976 was the bicentennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence and if you were not alive in 1976, you have no idea how much went into that recognition. Every store had special decorations, every town had commemorations, everyone had red, white, and blue clothing and this went on for a long time - not just on the Fourth of July in 1976. Part of this ongoing celebration took place in museums. The Indiana State Museum had a 3 year exhibit on Indiana's role in the American Revolution. People remember the original thirteen colonies and correctly note that Indiana was not one of those colonies. None of Indiana's immediate neighbors were, either. But, the modern states of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois were on the front line of a different kind of war zone during the American Revolution. There were no great ships, no massed armies, and precious few soldiers even wearing an actual uniform - but there were...
Read more

FREE FALL (Elvis Cole #4) (audiobook) by Robert Crais

Image
Originally published in book form in 1993. Published as an audiobook in 2008 by Brilliance Audio. Read by Mel Foster. Duration: 8 hours, 13 minutes. Unabridged. I found the Elvis Cole novels years ago, but somehow I have been reading them as a I found them rather than trying to trying to read them in chronological order. So, here I am going back more than thirty years to book 4 out of a 20+ book series, depending on how you count some of Crais' other books. Synopsis Like all classic detective novels, in Free Fall we find our intrepid main character in his office when a beautiful young lady enters looking for help with a desperate problem.  This young woman is concerned about her fiance. He is a relatively young member of LAPD and part of a rapid reaction team because he is a promising young officer. When crime pops up in a neighborhood - such as new gang activity or more drug sales or a series of home invasions, this team is sent out to supplement regular officers in the neighborho...
Read more

SUPERMAN '78 (graphic novel) by Robert Venditi

Image
Published in 2022 by DC Comics. Written by Robert Venditti. Art by Wilfredo Torres and Jordie Bellaire. Synopsis Superman '78 is a short series (sadly) based on the Christopher Reeves movies that were released from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s. Like the movies, the plot is pretty simple and everything follows a very traditional Superman storyline - red shorts, sassy Lois Lane, bald Lex Luthor, and so on. That's fine by me - I really like traditional Superman. Brainiac saves the city of Superman's Kryptonian home from ultimate destruction when Krypton explodes by shrinking them and storing them safely on his ship in a glass jar. He keeps them stored away because they are the remnants of "a careless, dangerous civilization." When Brainiac discovers that Earth has a Kryptonian (Superman), he seeks to save Earth by eradicating Superman because he is an infestation of an alien civilization that has already destroyed their own world. Kryptonians are dangerous a...
Read more

THE INSTINCT for COOPERATION: A GRAPHIC NOVEL CONVERSATION with NOAM CHOMSKY (graphic novel) by Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Wilson

Image
Published in 2018 by Seven Stories Press. Written by Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Wilson. Art by Eliseu Gouveia. Jeffrey Wilson interviewed Noam Chomsky for The Instinct for Cooperation and the results probably would have been a typical interview with Chomsky. The interview was about the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the little groups that organically formed within the protests, such as the food tent, the medical tent, and the library.  Wilson wove in interviews that he had done with people who participated in the Occupy Movement, students and teachers who had bad interactions with education "reform" movements, and other topics like student loan debt.  This could have easily been a mess, but Wilson does a very good job of weaving together all of the interviews so that it felt more like a natural free-flowing conversation. The illustrations helped move everything along to make this very digestible. There is a lot of food for thought. Well done. 5 out of 5 stars. This graphic no...
Read more

BATMAN - ONE BAD DAY: RA'S al GHUL (graphic novel) by Tom Taylor

Image
Published in 2023 by DC Comics Written by Tom Taylor Art by Ivan Reis, Danny Miki, and Brad Anderson Synopsis The One Bad Day series looks at individual top level Batman villains (If you are a fan of Bootface, sorry) and gives them a comic that focuses on just that villain.  In Batman - One Bad Day: Ra's al Ghul we encounter a newly brought back to life Ra's al Ghul. He looks at the current state of the world - a world with just a few corporate oligarchs controlling the media, manufacturing, shipping, etc. and decides to take action.  When Batman notices the odd string of deaths Bruce Wayne's corporate peers, he decides to start investigating (the "World's Greatest Detective" actually does some detecting!). Ra's al Ghul lashes out to deter the investigation, and he goes after what Batman values most... My Review As I write this review, I want to be clear that I am not a fan of the Ra's al Ghul character, but his goals in this graphic novel made for a...
Read more

Locked In (Jessica Daniel #1) by Kerry Wilkinson

Image
Solid first step by a self-published author who later went on to win himself a publishing contract Published by Thomas and Mercer in 2013 Kerry Wilkinson has done what almost all of Amazon's self-published authors have dreamed of - he has published a Kindle e-book, outsold the established names and got the attention of mainstream publishing houses and won himself a publishing contract. And it all started with this book: Locked In . I read Locked In in paper form and found it to quite a good mystery. While this was not life-changing literature, I found it to be much better than the latest offerings that I have read by much more established authors such as Patricia Cornwell and James Patterson. Wilkinsin is helped by the fact that he was a working journalist (he recently quit in order to focus on being an author) so he has the ability to write for the everyday reader. His journalistic background helps with one of his main characters, a reporter for a local newspaper. His pol...
Read more

THE RED DRAGON (Action Adventures Short Stories Collection #10) by L. Ron Hubbard

Image
Originally published in 1935 by the magazine "Five Novels" Re-published in 2013 by Galaxy Press . Long before L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986) became the creator of Scientology, he was a pulp fiction writer. He did this for nearly 20 years, with his first writing credit coming in 1932. The Red Dragon was originally written for a monthly publication called Five Novels. Synopsis The Red Dragon starts out very much like an Indiana Jones movie - an American damsel in distress is in China looking for the archaeological find her father had told her about. He has left clues to its location and she is seeking someone to help her. The site is located in Manchuria - a disputed zone under Japanese control in what would eventually become the beginnings of World War II in Asia (unknown to Hubbard at the time because Pearl Harbor attack was more than six years away). The mysterious Michael Stuart has stepped up to help. His nickname is The Red Dragon because he is audacious and because he had r...
Read more