The Intercept by Dick Wolf

If anyone can tell a tale, it should be the creative force behind the Law & Order franchise. Especially with NYC as the backdrop.

Jeremy Fisk works the Joint Terrorism Task Force in NY – intel. He’s part of a team sent to Ramstein AFB in Germany to be the first to pick through the souvenirs of the Bin Laden take down. Nothing of note until one of the NSA geeks finds a coded message hidden in a touristy image of sunflowers.  OBL has grown weary of blowing up planes, buildings, and killing people. His caliphate is best served by destroying symbols.

Back in NYC, Fisk is trying to reason out what symbols would be targets for al Qaeda. He and his detective girlfriend are trying to assemble a puzzle for which they have no picture, getting nowhere fast.

An SAS flight from Stockholm is on descent into Kennedy airport. A Muslim man rises and rushes the cockpit door, screaming Islamic chants and holding a bomb detonator. When he can’t get through the door, he grabs a flight attendant and holds a knife to her throat. Suddenly, 5 passengers pounce of the would-be bomber and subdue him.

The plane lands safely and the 5 passengers and the flight attendant are instant heroes. For the next few days leading up to the July 4^th celebration and the opening of the new World Trade Center, ‘The Six” are headline news making all the right stops on TV and live events, all courtesy of the Mayor’s PR machine.

The captured Muslim sings like The Four Tenors, but he really doesn’t know much. And his detonator went to nothing - not even a dud. Fisk is sure this idiot was a throw down – a plant to distract authorities from the real villains and convinces his bosses at the JTTF to start perhaps the most comprehensive, yet quiet, manhunt in NYC’s history.  There is too much going on that weekend, too many high profile events and targets (including Obama and Bush) to not use every resource at hand.

Like I said, Wolf should be able to bring it when it comes to a police procedural/political thriller and he does. Some reviewers I read said it reads like a novelization of a script, including Wolf’s own son. Wolf sends the reader down multiple blind alleys, each with their own sleeper cell, none of whom have clue what awaits other than paradise. But I have to agree with some reviewers who say that the Fisk character needs to be developed more. Great plot, highly plausible and believable.

This book was way too easy to get caught up in and kept me awake far later than I should’ve been on multiple nights. OK, the ending was a bit less than triumphant, given the massive, breakneck buildup, but I’m not going to complain. Wolf’s TV producing career may have begun with Miami Vice, but this is his first novel making him a rookie, so I’ll cut him a break and wait to see how Fisk fares in the next installment.

East Coast Don