The Twelfth Iman by Joel Rosenberg

Iran is on the verge of their own nuclear bomb. Make that 9 nuclear bombs and more in the pipeline. Muslim writings state that a new world order ruled under Islamic Law will be established when Iran produces the might to defeat the great Satans (USA and Israel) and led by a mythic cleric known as the Twelfth Iman. Iran has waited centuries for this Iman to surface and lead them into a new era of peace and brotherhood - achieved by force.

And it looks like Islamic prophecy is coming true. The US intelligence services are caught flatfooted about a Muslim country's military power, again. Israel is mobilizing for war. Iran conducts an underground nuclear test and the CIA can't seem to connect the dots of nuclear power, the Islamic government, Koran prophesies, and the sporadic sightings of the Twelfth Iman. How can western governments be so blind to a country that denies the holocaust occurred is on the brink of causing their own?

All this is the reason for Rosenberg to begin a new three-part series on Iran and the Islamic view of the end of days. The bulk of this book is backstory to the main characters of the new series. Charlie Harper (not that one) is an embedded CIA agent in Tehran in the late 70's when the Shah's regime collapsed. He and his wife grab their neighbors and best friends, the Shirazi's, make a mad dash for the border to escape and get back to the US.

Once in the US, the Harpers settle in NJ while the Shirazi's go to Syracuse, NY. The father's take the oldest sons on a September fishing week in rural Canada. When the youngest Shirazi, David, is finally old enough for the vacation, Harper brings his daughter, Marseille. David resents this feminine intrusion, but ends up liking her - a lot. On the 11th, when they are supposed to leave the lake, they are stranded for a few days, coming home to an unspeakable reality.

David is Persian, not an Arab, but others in his school just see the enemy and David goes postal on some kids, eventually getting stuck in a residential high school in Alabama. I gonna skip about 20 steps and say that David eventually gets recruited into the CIA for a number of reasons and is now part of a team inserted into Iran to sniff out clues to their nuclear capability. Some careful snooping and some good luck land David far deeper into the Iranian hierarchy, of course, placing himself, his team, his local contacts in serious jeopardy.

I can't go much more of the plot cuz my blogging partner has it on his Kindle and I don't want him to get mad at me for revealing too much of the plot. I'll just reiterate what I said in an earlier post regarding Rosenberg's writing. The author is a Christian, born of a Jewish father and Gentile mother and his plots are heavily steeped in biblical pedagogy. While the biblical connections are necessary for the plot Rosenberg presents, some readers might find it a little overbearing, ending up sounding a bit like the Left Behind series. I'll venture a guess and say that fans of Rosenberg's books (like me) won't care one bit. Yes, he uses some of the same tricks used by authors like Brown, Grisham, et al. (e.g. ending most every chapter in a bit of a cliffhanger and some all too convenient bits of luck), but his style, love it or hate it, keeps the story moving along at a "damn, now what?" pace.

Dang good yarn, folks. Just don't be put off by the sermonizing that is concentrated in the latter third of the book. Follow it for what it is, - a terrific political thriller. Rosenberg seems to have a knack for being a couple years ahead of what actually ends of happening.

East Coast Don