Accepted historical fact often turns out to be mere fiction. That’s not only the underlying theme of J. Christoph Amberger’s The Lazarus Smile. But sometimes even modern media remind us of this truth:

By Guy Keleny, Independent.co.uk

Decline and fall: Most of the things that “everybody knows” are wrong. One of them surfaced in Bruce Anderson’s Monday piece: the familiar idea that the fall of the Roman Empire was accompanied, if not caused, by spectacular dissipation on the part of its ruling class. Anderson was arguing that drug prohibition should be relaxed. “The aim of these measures would not be the promotion of universal hippydom: still less, to bring the decadence of the late Roman empire to the streets of south London.”

In fact the familiar monsters of depravity — Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Commodus — ruled the Roman Empire at the height of its power in the first and second centuries. The nonentities who presided over its decline in the fourth and fifth centuries — Honorius, Arcadius, Valentinian III — were Christian gentlemen of comparative personal respectability. No druggies they.

And here is a piece of more recent history. “Hippydom” should be “hippiedom”. They say that if you remember the Sixties you weren’t really there, but I definitely remember the spelling of “hippie”.

(Read Mr. Keleny’s whole article here…)

The Lazarus Smile has been available as an e-book from Amazon.com since Nov. 1, 2009. The paperback release is scheduled for Dec. 15, 2009.

]]> http://kathydisanto.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/growing-up-vs-growing-weird/ Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:29:23 +0000 Kathy DiSanto http://kathydisanto.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/growing-up-vs-growing-weird/

I’ve decided writing a series of novels featuring the same cast of characters is a tricky business.

On the plus side, writing the same characters gives the author a chance to grow those main characters up–you know, flesh them out and let them get older and wiser and that much more interesting.  Complex relationships can evolve.  We the readers get to know the characters, until reading about them is almost like reading about good friends.  We can’t wait to see them again in the next novel.

Jan Karon’s Mitford series is a dandy example, probably one of the best.  Father Tim, his wife, their adopted son, the highly eccentric denizens of Mitford … everybody and his mother growing and changing as they struggle to deal with life’s latest curve balls.  We’re talking multidimensional growth here–physical, social, emotional, marital, and spiritual.  No wonder we found it hard to wait for the next book!  We looked forward to visiting those wonderful characters again and again.  Made us feel sort of warm and gooey inside just to think about them … like old home week.

(Pause for fair warning:  It occurs to me that perhaps my readers … all ten of them … might get whiplash trying to follow my tastes in fiction.  Rural, small-town Mitford to action-packed adventure?  What’s with that?  I’ll let you know as soon as I figure it out myself.  For now, just buckle your seat belts and make sure your tray tables are in the up-and-locked position.)

Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt novels are populated with enduring characters.  (And I’m sure Clive will be gratified to hear me say so.)  Now I’m one of those late arrivals who read the most recent books first, got interested, and went back to pick up the old ones.  I only mention it because, in all honesty, I like Dirk and his friends a lot more now.  This is no doubt because I’m female and thus unable to appreciate some of the … shall we say, rougher edges? … on Dirk’s early character.  Thankfully, Dirk has cleaned up his act, especially where the ladies are concerned.  (Dirk Junior, please take note.)  Anyway, I always look forward to Dirk’s devil-may-care daring-do, as well as his and Al’s smart remarks, which never fail to catapult some villain (or villainess) into a murderous rage.

Brad Thor’s Scot Harvath would be another case in point.  Scot is a counterterrorism operative extraordinaire, and I’ve followed him through several novels.  The former Navy SEAL–well, technically, he’s still a Navy SEAL … it’s complicated–is growing and changing in important ways.  Like wanting to start a family, for instance.  Speaking of which … I would just like to state for the record, I devoutly hope the bad feeling I have about him and Tracy turns out to be wrong.  Be that as it may, Scot gets more interesting, his life a bit more complicated, with each adventure–which is exactly as it should be.

Now we come to the minus side, where ongoing characters go awry, off the wire, nutso.  As my little gray-haired mama likes to remind me, “If you can’t say something nice about somebody ….”  So I’m not going to name names.  Suffice it to say, the characters in question are getting a bit … well, weird.  The tough counterterrorism operative breaking out with a bad case of potty mouth … this, I gather, is meant to demonstrate raw, tough masculinity (puh-leeze!) … and a near-psychotic, kill-anybody-who-looks-at-you-askance attitude.  The male-female detective duo who went from a being a couple of highly trained, tough, sharp cookies to a pair of near-neurotics.

Watching formerly interesting characters crash and burn isn’t much fun.  (Insert frowny emoticon here.)

I feel kind of silly, white-knuckling a paperback as I yell, “Pull up!  PULL UP!”

Black Order

In this book, there is a series of alarming incidents occurring in various parts of the world – South Africa, Europe, and the Himalayas. And the Sigma Force team get into action to investigate and tackle the cause of these incidents.

The basic premise of the plot – neo-Nazis using some advanced technology (some weird form of genetic engineering) developed during Hitler’s time want to create a new world populated with super men and super women, is definitely not the most innovative. However, the handling of the story is first-class.

The book is a page turner from the very first page. The author provides a brief but effective sketch of the main characters without slowing down the pace of the story. This is something I really appreciate. I have read so many novels, where in each book of the series, a full character sketch is provided of the main protagonists. I really liked James Rollins’ brevity here.

I also liked the fact that the bad guys are not all dark. Most of them showed some humane traits, and in fact a couple were quite likable. I also liked that the members of Sigma Force were nice, quiet, good guys who quietly went about their mission without mouthing jingoistic utterly nonsensical, sometimes offensive dialogues (if you have read Brad Thor or Tom Clancy, you know what I am talking about).

What took away from the book, was the somewhat implausible (and utterly predictable) plot. Apparently, a Nazi scientist has hidden a scientific secret in a copy of The Bible. The bad guys want to get to this secret, so that they can use it to their own evil ends. The good guys race against the bad guys to get hold of this Bible. These modern day researchers (who don’t seem to have a very solid historical or scientific background) are able to break this code in a matter of days, which is very unbelievable. Once revealed, the secret is also a huge let down. In fact, I think I am reading too many stories dealing with hidden secrets, codes, and so on. So, these parts of the book were very boring and predictable for me.

The climax of the book is also a little hackneyed – desperately trying to tie all loose ends together, and everything rushing towards the climax.

However, in spite of all these flaws, I still found myself liking this book. It is a good, solid thriller, which delivered exactly what it promised.

Cheers,

Soccer season has officially begun.

Chicky and the Mr. left for the other side of the state for her first weekend of practice.

That left Rooster and me at home alone.

It’s actually a good combination, as our personalities mesh quite well.

This morning, he casually mentioned how we had not been to Such-and-Such Restaurant in a long time, and how we’re the only two in the family who really like it.

Gee, boy, could the hint be any more obvious?

I had to laugh.  You see, when the other two members of the family are gone, we have a couple of things we like to do together…eat at this restaurant and watch movies.

We knew that a movie would push the budget too far, so we opted for lunch out instead.

But first, I wanted to get in my workout.  After biking 5.6 miles with a minimal amount of pain and a lot of sweat, and a nice long shower, we settled in to watch the X Games.  I find it difficult to watch these sports…too many people falling down wrong on ankles and elbows.  Ouch!

We finally got around to our lunch plans.

It was so much fun!  Rooster is a cute kid (did I actually just type that?) teenager with the personality to match.  The conversation was easy, and lunch was terrific.

Then, we drove to the bookstore on the beach.

Ahhh…the smell of new books.  It’s almost as satisfying as a a Godiva Caramel Chocolixer (almost but not quite).

I had a $2 coupon that I simply could not allow to go unused.

I headed straight for the knitting books.

In my heart, I knew what I wanted, but I looked, disinterested, at some of the other books before walking away from that aisle.  In my hands?

Ahhh…Cookie A…you’ve just got to love her patterns!  I’ve made a few of the patterns available on Knitty and love how creative she is!  I’ve already googled for pattern errata and found a list here.

Rooster was ready to go by then, but when he mentioned that Brad Thor has a new book out…well, I had to take a peek.

Thor is the author of the series of books I’ve recently read my way through…with the exception of the second to the last one.  Its paperback version was a temptation that proved too much for me.

I mean…I had to find out what happened between the last book I’d read and the final one in the series.  It would be like reading the first and third Lord of the Ring books and skipping the second (were there only three?).  This one went in my hands with the knitting book…

I figured we’d better get out of the store after that.

We had a rather mellow afternoon followed by more X Games.   We watched one gal, a deaf young lady, win her Super X race (dirt bike).  It was very inspirational to see her fly through the course using her other senses and raw talent.  Wow!

Tomorrow will be a day of church, NASCAR, and knitting…maybe even a little napping.

Boy, do I love these Mother-Son Weekends!

The Apostle by Brad Thor

The second book I’ve read by this author, I found this one to be even better.  I loved learning about Afghanistan (I have to admit, I had no idea that their winters were so harsh!) and the story overall is very well done. If you’re a fan of Barry’s though, you will most likely not enjoy the book, though, as the newly elected fictional president is obviously a take (and not a flattering one) on Barry.

From Amazon:

Brad Thor is one of the preeminent writers of thriller today, and his best-selling books are too numerous to count…so instead of talking about his past successes, let’s get straight to his newest novel: The Apostle: A Thriller, shall we? The book, in short, is about an American physician who gets kidnapped while working in Afghanistan. Ah, the scene is set, but this doctor has connections. He, and his family, are politically connected to America’s new President, and turn to him for help, but the ransom being asked is too steep for the President, and he decides to launch a covert operation to get the American physician back instead.

The premise, along with the characters, are rather interesting – they have a passionate view on the current state and try to convince others to come to that point of view. It would seem that The Apostle has mingled in current affairs with a fictional tale. The President in the story is another interesting facsimile of our current Commander in Chief. A quote from the book “the new President had been very aggressive with his first 100 days. Campaigning on a platform of change, and he had done just that when he stepped into the Oval Office, and not necessarily for the better.” The President, in the book, had single handily eviscerated the central intelligence of the country.

Much like all of Brad Thor’s novels, he bases them on current headlines but allows the reader to decide which is which. Is the President in the book based off of our current President? The Apostle informs, implores, and entertains the reader in a way that only a few authors can. He has created another bare-knuckled thrill ride that seems so believable, it could have been taken from the headline news. I really enjoyed this novel (as I’ve enjoyed all Brad Thor’s novels) I guarantee everyone will walk away from this reading experience knowing more about global terrorism, central intelligence, and other aspects of our country that you didn’t know before.

But I personally think the true message of the book (or at least what I took it to be) As Americans there is quite a bit of frustrations with the higher offices of the country. We have got fantastic men and women in the militaries that are putting their lives on the line to protect our citizens, to protect our country, and to protect Lady Liberty, and yet, they are forced to deal with some of the worst management and leadership…and they shouldn’t have to. This book really is a voice for the people who can’t speak of these matters due to the red tape and bureaucracy. The Apostle: A Thriller is an incredible novel that you don’t want to miss.

I am an easy reader to please, at least in the genre of excitemotainment. Give me an angsty hero and a fanatic set of villains, arrange a series of explosive confrontations in exotic locales, and I will scooch back into my pillows and turn a blind eye on triteness, solecisms, stereotypes, and even (though this requires more forebearance) the occassional dull patch.

My bar for excitemotainment is set low indeed, and yet there are authors capable of tripping over it. Brad Thor pleases millions of discerning fans all over the world with his series of Scot Horvath thrillers, but I am unable to discern what they discern. The novel pictured above, moments before it toppled from the side table into the wastebasket’s maw, came in second, in a competition to hold my interest, to a cobweb of dust dangling in the corner of the ceiling.

What was The Last Patriot about? I think there was an explosion. Yes. Yes, there was. I know there was a secret spy barge on the Seine in Paris where Scot Horvath torments his prisoners. Um. Um. Oh yes! There’s a bit of Da Vinci Code intrigue concerning a lost bit of the Koran in which Mohammed sheepishly admits he made it all up. If the bit can be found, well, oh my goodness, that could change the course of…

Well, who knows what it could change the course of? Reading the Hardy Boys level prose about all these never-walk-when-you-can-run excitable types was like having to listen to a neither very bright nor tidy eight-year-old endlessly detail the plot of a Transformers cartoon show. It’s what unconsciousness was invented for.

The Last Patriot
by Brad Thor
(Pocket Books, Mass Market Paperback, 480pp.)

This week on Dr. Blogstein’s
Radio Happy Hour:

#1 New York Times bestselling author Brad Thor celebrates the launch of his new thriller, The Apostle on this week’s show.

Thor, who is known for his high octane, page turners featuring ex-Navy Seal Scot Harvath, traveled to Afghanistan to give The Apostle a ripped from the headlines authenticity.

We’ll hear about what he saw and experienced in the war zone, whether he plans on running for political office in the near future and what’s taking Hollywood so long to adapt his books into movies.

Maybe the promo spot for The Apostle will light a fire under Hollywood producers:

The Steps are: Will Thompson (vocals & guitar), Sam Thompson (lead guitar), Stephen Ross (bass), Z Lynch (drums).

In 2005, the Austin, TX based band took flight “on a journey to bring a classic sound back to modern rock.”

They’ve done it and Will Thompson will tell us all about it.

Dr. Blogstein, Vinny Bond and Justin the Mouthinator play clips from the many times the Radio Happy Hour discussed “The King of Pop,” Michael Jackson.

We hear from Dangerous Lee, Corey Feldman, and TruDog AKA “Notorious Homo Thug”

Listen at 9pm EST : www.drblogstein.com

This is the 12^th Scot Harvath novel but the first time I’ve met him and his author Brad Thor.  In “The Last Patriot” Scot, a former Navy SEAL and counter-terrorism agent, and his girlfriend Tracy are in Paris enjoying some time together as Tracy recuperates after having had a bomb blow up on her.  She’s suffering headaches but hiding them from Scot.  From a quiet cafe, Scott notices a man pop open the locks on a Peugeot and move it down the street.  A Mercedes parks in the Peugeot’s place.  Scot and Tracy leave the cafe, but stand aside to let someone pass.  As they do so, Scot notices the Mercedes driver, now standing on the pavement at the end of the block, check a photograph and press a remote device.  Scot pushes the man they stood aside to let pass back into the cafe and lies on top of him as the car bomb is detonated.  In confusion after the bomb going off, the man disappears but not before Scot gets his wallet and learns the man is Dr Anthony Nichols.

Tracy and Scot trace Dr Anthony Nichols back to his hotel room.  Interrogating him, Scot learns Dr Nichols is working for the President officially as an archivist, unofficially with specific regard to the Jefferson archive particularly Jefferson’s studies of the Koran to help him learn more about the pirates off the Barbary coast who believed killing non Muslims was justified and discovered there was a last revelation of Mohammed which is not in the Koran, and is in Paris to collect a rare book, an edition of “Don Quixote” that belonged to Thomas Jefferson believed to be notated with a code that will unlock the last revelation.  Scot uses contacts to take Dr Nichols and Tracy to a safe house, reluctantly Scot agrees to help the professor who clearly has not been trained to cope with being the target of a professional terrorist.  Scot meets with the book dealer, but both are held at gunpoint and escorted towards the book fair exit.  As they approach the exit, the gunman uses Scot as a shield to shoot police.  Scot takes advantage of the gunman’s distraction to escape with the dealer.  The dealer helps them through an alternative exit.  Through the dealer they learn the book is held in a mosque in one of the dodgier areas of Paris.

Meanwhile man is arrested in a park in Washington for the apparent murder of his apparent lover Nura Khalifa, niece of Dr Khalifa.  Dr Khalifa was studying papers, believed to be from the Koran, found at an archaeological dig in Yemen.  Nura Khalifa is a reluctant member of Foundation on American Islamic Relations (FAIR) and the man believes he was recruited as a NOC into the FBI to infiltrate FAIR under a mission called Glass Canyon.  As soon as the man starts talking about NOCs and the FBI, the police are only too happy to hand him over to the CIA.  The CIA are sceptical at first but then the man mentions top secret project and, pulling through the project files, a CIA Agent comes across a record that doesn’t make sense.  A Matthew Dodds is listed as killed in action, remains not found but there is no evidence that he was killed so he should have been listed as missing in action.  The CIA agent starts investigating.

It then becomes a race.  Can Scot and Dr Nichols unlock the code and get to the last revelation before the terrorists who are hell-bent on murdering anyone involved and destroying any evidence pointing to a last revelation?  Tracy is hospitalised and treated in intensive care for swelling on her brain and Scot needs answers before the French police arrest her as they are convinced she and Scot are somehow connected with the car bombing and the shooting at the book fair.  Action moves from France to the States as it becomes apparent that Glass Canyon was set up by FAIR to infiltrate itself to weed out weaker members and the man arrested in Washington was actually reporting to the missing CIA agent who faked his own death and converted to Islam after his wife and child were killed.  The pace picks up, the body count mounts – noticeably Scot only kills in self-defence but the FAIR terrorists kill indiscriminately – and the plot holds up as it moves towards its denouement. 

Brad Thor is careful to differentiate between the majority of peaceful Muslims and the extremists in the fictional FAIR.  The last revelation of Mohammed doesn’t exist, although Brad Thor makes the concept credible, and then contents hinted at rather than fully revealed.   And the moment of author vanity when it’s revealed Scot’s treasured gun has ‘Thor’ engraved on it is forgivable. 

Less forgivable is the moment of author intrusion at the end of the prologue where Nura Khalifa’s contact meets her in the park and Brad Thor feels obliged to tell the reader “had he been paying attention… he might have had time to react to the two men who sprang from the shadows.”  I don’t want to be told, I want to know what it felt like for Andrew whose attention was on Nura to suddenly be grabbed and overpowered.  The author intrusion pulls away the suspense and detracts from the scene.  But it wouldn’t make me hesitate to pick up another Brad Thor novel.

The novel-as-screenplay approach, where the initial chapters show brief shots of new characters and it doesn’t really get going until we catch up with Scot and Tracy in Paris, works very well here because the underlying novel is strong and holds the story well.  Brad Thor’s writing is very visual.  It’s rare we hear anything other than the explosions, alarms, gunshots or dialogue, or have smells described – a non smelling mosque, Paris without the scent of coffee and crepes, no musty paper and wood smells at the book fair – this storyteller’s in a hurry to get on with the plot.

Simon and Schuster’s website is here, but it’s still telling me I need to upgrade my browser to IE7 or later when I’m using IE8 so I still can’t ’see’ the site.

BREAKING NEWS – June 4, 2009 – Nashville, TN

When Continental Airlines flight CO2471 landed in Nashville last night, America almost witnessed the first test of the strength of our Constitution.  A close friend of mine was traveling from Houston, TX back to Tennessee on this flight, when about 20 minutes into the flight, a flight attendant approached him.  He was reading the book “The Last Patriot” by Brad Thor (Simon & Schuster).  The flight attendant told him that he would have to put away the book he was reading.  My friend asked why? The attendant replied that there had been a complaint and that someone was offended by seeing that book read in public.

My friend was astonished that this request was actually being made…in America!  He replied angrily asking who had been offended? My friend is very patriotic, very fair minded, certainly not racist, but he was extremely incensed. So, to make a point he asked in a voice loud enough to be heard by others, “Maybe that towel-head behind me?” The attendant did not answer.

My friend said that he would NOT put away his book.  He said that this was still America – a land where we are free to read whatever we choose.  He said that he would gladly deal with any “offense” when they landed in Nashville and that the airline could even have him met with police if they felt necessary.

The flight attendant returned to her post.  Landing in Nashville…nothing happened.  My friend deplaned, gathered his luggage, went to his truck and called me.

I am appalled at the action of this flight attendant and wonder if this behavior is condoned by Continental Airlines.  Because my friend was very tired and didn’t want to “make any further scene,” he didn’t pursue the Captain or a Continental representative to discuss the matter last night.  But, rest assured…he is a patriot, a proud American…and this will not be the end of the story.

As I sit tonight thinking about this incident, I cannot just let this go unnoticed.  This is outrageous!   A direct affront to our Constitution and to our freedom.  Since when did we, Americans, begin to fear offending someone?  Are we afraid of litigation? Of being tagged racist or discriminatory? When did we allow our personal freedoms to be abolished?  When did we start apologizing for everything under the sun?

Well, thank you Mr. Barak “I’m So Sorry” Obama for setting the precedent that our citizens should apologize for being FREE Americans.  In fact, DAMN you. And Damn the “offended” passenger who is too weak to face opposing views  and apparently too stupid to know to simply turn his head or – how about this – IGNORE IT.  And Damn Continental Airlines, and specifically this flight attendant, for actually having the nerve, no – the stupidity to act on such an outrageous request from a passenger.  [Next time I am “offended” by someone’s smell, I shall merely ask the flight attendant to push him out of the plane!]

Perhaps, though, I am more appalled at our own citizens who continue to accept such nonsense and comply!  Those are the people who, sadly, do not merit the freedom in which they live.  It really makes me take pause and reconsider the old phrases, “survival of the fittest” and “thin the herd.”

I ask you my readers, how many others of you have experienced a similar event?

Oh, and by the way…go buy Brad Thor’s book “The Last Patriot.” Read the Constitution OUTLOUD, Fly an American flag, and say a prayer in public!!  Let’s all offend someone tomorrow!

ALW

We’re home after another nine hour drive.

Chicky’s team lost yesterday 0-1.  We outplayed the other team, but as any soccer fan knows, it only takes one goal to win.

The girls were disappointed, as was to be expected.  It was obvious to everyone watching that they were the better team.  I guess that the Lord had other plans for them.  Fortunately, Chicky didn’t come off the field crying like last year.  Maybe she had already done it before I got to the team’s bench.

As the game ended, I couldn’t help but reflect on lessons learned from this season.  Y’all have ridden this roller coaster ride with us, so you know the ups and downs we’ve been through.  I think one of the most important things we can walk away with is that Chicky figured out how much soccer means to her.  She truly loves the game, and she wants to play with others who love it as much as she does.  She had waffled for a while, leaving the team for a while to figure things out.  That is no longer the case.  She has a renewed fire in her heart, and it shows through her playing.

The other big lesson we all learned was balance.  Chicky needed balance in her life (as we all do), and drawing a line in the sand became very important way for us to keep her sanity in check (I might debate myself on that point).  You only get to be a teen once (can I hear a hallelujah from all the moms out there!).  Not that I believe in doing whatever you want, but you know what I mean.  If you’ve been reading my blog for very long, you definitely know what I mean.

We eased the sadness of the loss by a delicious dinner at Carrabbas.  We ate with Chicky’s best friend, who will be graduating from high school in a couple of weeks.  They’ve been teammates for six years and, thus, have grown up on the field together.  We shared a lot of laughs around the table last night as the families are quite close.  When you travel together as much as we have, you can’t help but consider each other extended family.  We’ll miss them next season.

Although the Mr. wanted to sleep in, I insisted that we get an early start home.  The kids wanted to get home in time for church, and I wanted to be able to watch the Survivor finale.  I would have much rather watched it online had that meant that Chicky would have been playing in the Finals; however, since that didn’t happen, I figured why not go on home.

The ride was uneventful.  We made far fewer stops this go-round, and I managed not to leave my purse any place either (I had left it at Chick fil A on the way down — which I quickly noticed and went back for).  I took the first shift of driving since the Mr. is not a morning person.

As I navigated the long, boring stretch of the Turnpike, I reminisced about the years I spent toting the kids back and forth to the grandparents’ from our home in Miami.  It was a solid nine-hour drive, and I always took the Turnpike because it was the safest route.  The Mr. had a demanding new job that he could not take time off from.  The kids were amazing in the car after getting out their angst about an hour into the trip.  They would always settle down, somehow understanding that they would be spoiled rotten at the end of the journey.  The worst part for me was the stretch between West Palm Beach and Orlando.

What a barren panorama!  There’s not much to break up the monotony, so I tried to hit it before lunch and a full stomach and, thus, the sleepies. The kids used to sing along to Christian songs on the tapes I played for them.  Now they listen to their iPods or watch movies on their laptops.  Rooster managed to read two of Brad Thor’s books.  His newest one is The Last Patriot.

Do not ask me why, but the Mr., who never, ever reads, went to the bookstore recently and picked up five of this author’s books.  As the kids asked in the car, “Daddy reads?”  To which we heehawed.

I read The Last Patriot last Thursday.  It was a fast read…only taking me about five hours to finish.  The chapters are short, and the topic is relevant to the terrorism threats the world faces today.  The author reminds me of Tom Clancy, without so many technical details.

Rooster flew through this book on the way down and quickly began the author’s first book, which the Mr. just happened to put in the car.  Halfway home today, Rooster had finished it as well.

All-in-all, the ride was quiet.  The Mr. likes to stop at hotels and use their bathrooms since they are so much cleaner than gas stations.  We’ve ceased to be embarrassed as he inquires about directions to local restaurants…his excuse for using their potties.  Today, we stopped at a Hilton, and look what was outside…

A horse-drawn carriage!  The horse’s name is Buddy, and he was a real sweetie, allowing me to give his nose a rub.  I’m such a sucker for animals.

So now we’re home.  Chicky has another tournament Memorial Day weekend.  I’m not even going to bother putting the suitcases away.  I’ll wash our clothes and re-pack them since I need my team t-shirts to wear in support of the girls.

It won’t be long before I’m singing, “On the Road Again…”

The Last Patriot by Brad Thor

Wa-wa loaned me this book, and I found it very enjoyable.  If you like Steve Berry or Dan Brown, you’ll like this book.

Here is the info from Amazon:

June 632 A.D.: Deep within the Uranah Valley of Mount Arafat in Mecca, the Prophet Mohammed shares with his closest companions a final and startling revelation. Within days, he is assassinated.

September 1789: U.S. Minister to France Thomas Jefferson, who is charged with forging a truce with the violent Muslim pirates of the Barbary Coast, makes a shocking discovery – one that could forever impact the world’s relationship with Islam.

Present day: When a car bomb explodes outside a Parisian café, Scot Harvath is thrust back into the life he has tried so desperately to leave behind.

Saving the intended victim of the attack, Harvath becomes party to an amazing and perilous race to uncover a secret so powerful that militant Islam could be defeated once and for all without firing another shot, dropping another bomb, or launching another covert action.

But as desperate as the American government is to have the information brought to light, there are powerful forces aligned against it – men who are just as determined that Mohammed’s mysterious final revelation continue to remain hidden forever.

What Jason Bourne was to the Cold War, Scot Harvath is to the War on Terror. Brad Thor has created “the perfect all-American hero for the post September 11 world” (Nelson DeMille) and will keep readers glued to the pages as he once again takes them across the globe on a heart-pounding chase where the stakes are higher than they have ever been before.

The Last Patriot by Brad Thor

However, The Last Patriot is definitely good material for my blog. In this story, former Navy SEAL Scot Harvarth races against Islamic fundamentalists in his search to find one of the lost revelations of the Prophet Mohammed. This revelation apparently urges Muslims to live in peace and brotherhood amongst people of all religions. The United States hopes that this find will destroy Islamic terrorism once and for all.

The premise of the story is very, very similar to Dan Brown’s novels – Angels and Demons, and The Da Vinci Code. The only difference is, Dan Brown targeted Christianity and Brad is targeting Islam. There is one more major difference. Dan Brown’s novels were pretty fast moving, and conceptually they were very fresh (at least to me). However, The Last Patriot just comes out sounding very wanna-beish and copycat-ish.

In addition, reading the novel you can make out a very strong anti-Islamic tone, and a very strong pro-Bush administration tone. I bet the author voted Republican in the recent elections. I somehow could not appreciate the tone of it. Some of the words used are extremely harsh and xenophobic.

The novel is also not as fast-paced as I would like it to be. It starts off very briskly, but then really sags in places. The more interesting portions dealt with the history of the Islamic-American clashes that date back to the time of Thomas Jefferson. After reading this novel, I looked up Thomas Jefferson on the web, and I was totally impressed (apart from being one of the most revered Presidents of the United States, he was a reknowned horticulturist, statesman, architect, archaeologist, and inventor). In addition, the references to Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote were extremely interesting, and made me want to go and read that long-delayed book.

However, apart from those sections, this book was mediocre, and badly written. It’s a downright shame this seems to be topping bestseller lists around the world !

America’s worst nightmare has just become a brutal reality. The most unlikely terrorist enemy of all now holds a knife against the country’s throat. With both diplomatic and conventional military options swept from the table, the president of the United States calls upon America’s only hope, Navy SEAL turned Secret Service agent Scot Harvath.

With the fragile peace between the world’s nations shattered, Harvath must unravel a brilliantly orchestrated, fiendishly timed conspiracy intent upon bringing the United States to its knees. Teamed with beautiful Russian Intelligence agent Alexandra Ivanova and a highly trained CIA paramilitary detachment, Harvath races from the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., to the streets of Berlin, the coast of Finland, and into the heart of Mother Russia herself before returning home for a final showdown with an enemy from America’s past more sinister and deadly than has ever been seen before….

State of the Union: A Thriller is available at Amazon for $7.99. To Order click here
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Other Products of Interest

• Blowback: A Thriller
• Path of the Assassin: A Thriller
• Takedown: A Thriller
• The Lions of Lucerne
• The First Commandment: A Thriller

Brad Thor

Actually it is probably more like Blog an Author because I’ve started reading Brad Thor and I’m enthralled. His books are fast paced political thrillers with Scot Harvath as his hero in all the books. Scot is an amazing soldier, agent, and true patriot who will do anything for his country. He belief system is true and complete. He truly stands for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. I’ve just read this week; Blowback and Throwdown. Excellent reads.

Jill James

THE LAST PATRIOT by Brad Thor

Brad Thor’s THE LAST PATRIOT, his seventh political thriller, is a high-voltage page-turner depicting the modern struggle between the U.S. and the fanatical faction of Islam that seeks their destruction. The foundation for this conflict may be disrupted forever with the rumor of a missing revelation of Mohammed that was removed from the Koran by some militant Islamic fanatics. The pace moves fast and furious as all of the sub-plots converge in the race to find this ancient text…

CHAPTER 1

Rome, Italy, Monday Evening

The Italian Centre for Photoreproduction, Binding, and Restoration of State Archives, also known as the CFLR, was located in an unassuming postmodern office building three blocks from the Tiber River at 14 Via Costanza Baudana Vaccolini. It boasted one of the world’s leading archival preservation facilities, as well as a young deputy assistant director named Alessandro Lombardi who was eager to begin his evening.

“Dottore, mi scusi,” said Lombardi.

Dr. Marwan Khalifa, a distinguished Koranic scholar in his early sixties with a handsome face and neatly trimmed beard, looked up from the desk he was working at. “Yes, Alessandro?”

The Italian adopted his most charming smile and asked, “Tonight, we finish early?”

Dr. Khalifa laughed and set down his pen. “You have another date this evening?”

Lombardi approached and showed the visiting scholar a picture on his mobile phone.

“What happened to the blond woman?”

Lombardi shrugged. “That was last week.”

Khalifa picked his pen back up. “I suppose I can be done in an hour.”

“An hour?” exclaimed Lombardi as he pressed his hands together in mock prayer. “Dottore, if I don’t leave now, all of the good tables outside will be gone. Please. When the weather is this nice, Italians are not allowed to work late. It’s state policy.”

Khalifa knew better. No matter what the weather, there were always people working late in the CFLR building — maybe not in the Research and Preservation department, but there was almost always a light burning somewhere. “If you want to leave your keys, I’ll lock up the office when I go.”

“And my time card?” asked Lombardi, pressing his luck.

“You get paid for the time you work, my friend.”

“Va bene,” replied the young man as he fished a set of keys for the department from his pocket and set them on the desk. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Have fun,” said Khalifa.

Lombardi flashed him the smile once more and then made his way toward the exit, turning off any unnecessary lights along his way.

Dr. Khalifa’s desk was a large drafting-style table, illuminated by two adjustable lamps. His time as well as Lombardi’s was being paid for by the Yemeni Antiquities Authority.

In 1972, workers in Yemen had made a startling discovery. Restoring the aging Great Mosque at Sana’a, said to have been one of the first architectural projects of Islam commissioned by the prophet Mohammed himself, the workers uncovered a hidden loft between the mosque’s inner and outer roofs. Inside the loft was a mound of parchments and pages of Arabic texts that at some point had been secreted away, and were now melded together through centuries of exposure to rain and dampness. In archeological circles, such a discovery was referred to as a “paper grave.”

Cursory examinations suggested that what the grave contained were tens of thousands of fragments from at least a thousand early parchment codices of the Koran.

Access to the full breadth of the find had never been allowed. Bits and pieces had been made available to a handful of scholars over the years, but out of respect for the sanctity of the documents, no one had ever been permitted to study the entire discovery. No one that is, until Dr. Marwan Khalifa.

Khalifa was one of the world’s preeminent Koranic scholars and had spent the majority of his professional career building relationships with the Yemeni Antiquities Authority and politely petitioning it to allow him to review the find. Finally, there was a changing of the guard and the new president of the Antiquities Authority, a significantly younger and more progressive man, invited Khalifa to study the entirety of what the workers at Sana’a had uncovered.

It didn’t take long for Khalifa to realize the magnitude of the find.

As Yemen didn’t have the proper facilities to preserve and study the fragments and as the Yemeni government was absolutely opposed to Khalifa taking the items back to the United States, an arrangement was made for the complete contents of the grave to be transferred to the CFLR in Rome where they could be preserved and studied before being returned to Yemen.

With the blessing of the new Antiquities Authority president, Khalifa oversaw the entire process, including the technical side which included such things as edge detection, document degradation, global and adaptive thresholding, color clustering, and image processing.

His anticipation grew as each scrap was preserved and he was able to begin assembling the pieces of the puzzle. A significant percentage of the parchments dated back to the seventh and eighth centuries — Islam’s first two centuries. Khalifa was handling pieces of the earliest Korans known to mankind.

This only made the inconsistencies he discovered from standard Koranic texts even more exciting.

A billion-and-a-half Muslims worldwide believed that the Koran they worshiped today was the perfect, inviolate word of God — an exact word-for-word, perfect copy of the original book as it exists in Paradise and just as it was transmitted, without a single error, by Allah to the Prophet Mohammed through the Angel Gabriel.

As a textual historian, Khalifa was fascinated by the inconsistencies. As a moderate Muslim who loved his religion, but believed deeply that it was in need of reform, he was overjoyed. The fact that he had found, and was continuing to find, aberrations that differed from Islamic dogma meant that the case could finally be made that the Koran needed to be reexamined in a historical framework.

He had always believed that the Koran had been written by man, not God. If such a thing could be proven, Muslims around the world would be able to reexamine their faith with a modern, twenty-first-century perspective, rather than the outdated, unenlightened perspective of seventh-century Arabia. And now it seemed that he had just the proof he needed.

It was such a powerful discovery that Khalifa could barely sleep at night. It dovetailed so well with another project his colleague Anthony Nichols was working on back in America, that he felt as if Allah himself was steering his research, that this was His divine will.

All Khalifa could think about when he wasn’t at work was getting back to the CFLR facility each day to further investigate the fragments.

Though on evenings like this Khalifa missed Lombardi’s companionship as well as his expertise with the technical equipment, the truth was that he hardly noticed when the young Italian was gone. In fact, he was often so engrossed that he barely noticed Lombardi even when he was standing at the desk right in front of him.

Turning to the voluminous collection of information he had stored on his rugged Toughbook laptop, Khalifa pulled up one of the thirty-two thousand images the CFLR had already digitally archived. While he could have crossed the room and retrieved the fragment itself, he often found it unnecessary as accessing the digital images was much easier.

Khalifa was working on lining up six slivers of text written in the Hijazzi script when a shadow fell across his drafting table. “What did you forget this time, Alessandro?” the scholar asked without looking up.

“I didn’t forget anything,” responded a deep, unfamiliar voice. “It is you who have forgotten.”

Dr. Khalifa looked up and saw a man in a long, black soutane with a white collar. It was a common sight throughout Rome, particularly near the Vatican. But while the CFLR did do a certain amount of work with the Holy See, Khalifa had never seen a priest inside the building. “Who are you?”

“That’s not important,” replied the priest as he moved closer. “I would rather discuss your faith.”

“You must be confused, Father,” said Khalifa as he sat up in his chair. “I’m not a Catholic. I’m Muslim.”

“I know,” said the priest softly. “That’s why I’m here.”

In an explosion of black cloth, the priest was suddenly behind Khalifa. One of his large, rough hands cupped the scholar’s chin while the other gripped the side of his head.

With a powerful snap, the priest broke Khalifa’s neck.

He stood there for a moment, the corpse clutched tightly, almost lovingly to his chest, then stepped back and let go.

Khalifa’s head slammed against the table before coming to rest beneath it.

The priest dragged the body across the floor and positioned it at the bottom of a set of stairs which led up to a small archival library. From there, it took only moments to set the fire.

Two hours later, having showered and changed, the assassin sat in his hotel room and studied Khalifa’s laptop. Connecting to a remote server, he had the Koranic scholar’s password program cracked within fifteen minutes. From there, one e-mail confirmed everything he needed to know.

Marwan, Finally, good news! It appears we have located the book. A dealer named René Bertrand is bringing it to market in Paris at the Antiquarian Book Fair. I will be meeting him there to negotiate the purchase. As you know, my funding is limited, but I have faith that barring an all-out bidding war, the book will be ours!

As planned, I will see you next Monday at 9:00 a.m. in the Middle Eastern Reading Room of the Library of Congress — although now we’ll have the book and can begin deciphering the location of the final revelation!

Anthony

The assassin had had Khalifa under surveillance long enough to know who the sender was and what he was referring to. It was a parallel and potentially more damaging project, which up until this point had appeared stalled. Obviously, things had changed — and not for the better.

The assassin shut down the laptop and spent the next several hours pondering the implication of what he had learned. He then started formulating a plan. When all of the angles had been considered and tested in his mind, he reactivated the computer.

Attaching the relevant e-mails between Khalifa and Anthony Nichols, he composed his report and delivered his assessment to his superiors.

Their response came back twenty minutes later, hidden in the draft folder of the e-mail account they shared. The assassin had been cleared for the Paris operation.

At the end of the message, his superiors instructed that the necessary funds would be transferred to Paris and all necessary arrangements would be made. They then congratulated him on his success in Rome.

The assassin deleted the message from the draft folder and logged off. After reciting his prayers, he disconnected his phone and hung the Do Not Disturb sign on his door. He would be leaving early in the morning and needed to rest. The next several days were going to be very busy. His superiors were in agreement that the Prophet Mohammed’s lost revelation needed to stay lost — forever.

CHAPTER 2

Paris, France
Friday

Thirty-seven-year-old American Scot Harvath studied the amazing woman sitting at the café table next to him. Her blond hair had grown back and came to just below her ears.

“We need to make a decision,” she said.

There it was — the topic he’d been trying to avoid since killing the man who had shot her nine months ago.

“I just want to make sure that you’re fully — ” he began, his voice trailing off.

“Recovered?” she asked, finishing his sentence for him.

Harvath nodded.

“Scot, this stopped being about my recovery the minute we left the United States. I’m fine. Not one hundred percent, but as close as I’m probably going to get.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

Tracy Hastings smiled. Prior to being targeted by an assassin bent on revenge against Harvath, Tracy had been a Naval Explosive Ordinance Disposal technician who had lost one of her luminescent, pale blue eyes when an IED she was attempting to defuse detonated prematurely. Though her face had undergone significant scarring, the plastic surgeons had done a remarkable job of minimizing the visible damage.

Hastings had always been in great shape, but after the accident she had thrown herself into her fitness routine. She had the most perfectly sculpted body of any woman Harvath had ever known. Self-conscious about her disfigurement and the pale blue eye given to her by her surgeons as a replacement, Tracy had been fond of joking that she had both a body to die for and the face to protect it.

It was a joke that Harvath had worked hard to wean from her repertoire. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever met, and slowly his hard work had paid off. The closer they grew and the safer Tracy felt with him, the less her self-deprecating humor seemed necessary.

The same could be said for Harvath. Ten years Tracy’s senior, he had used his sarcasm largely to keep the world at bay. Now, he used it to make her laugh.

With his handsome, rugged face, sandy brown hair, bright blue eyes, and muscular five-foot-ten frame, they made a striking couple.

“You want to know what I think?” she asked. “I think this is more about your recovery than mine. And that’s okay.”

Harvath started to object, but Tracy put her hand atop his and said, “We need to put what happened behind us and get on with our lives.”

They had been together less than a year, but she knew him better than anyone ever had. She knew he’d never be happy living an ordinary life. So much of who he was and how he saw himself came from what he did. He needed to get back to it, even if that meant her nudging him toward it.

Harvath slid his hand out from under hers. He couldn’t put what had happened behind him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the picture of finding Tracy in a pool of blood with a bullet in the back of her head, or the memory of the president who had stood in his way while the person responsible continued to target those closest to Harvath. A couple of friends suggested that maybe he was suffering from PTSD, but in the words of an Army colonel he once cross-trained with, Harvath didn’t get PTSD, he gave it.

“We can’t be gypsies forever,” Tracy insisted. “Our lives have been on hold long enough. We need to get back to the real world, and you need to think about going back to work.”

“There’s about as much chance of me going back to work for Jack Rutledge as there is of me going to work for a terrorist organization. I’m done,” he said.

A Navy SEAL who had joined the president’s Secret Service detail in an effort to help improve the White House’s ability to stave off and respond to terrorist attacks, Harvath had grown to become the president’s number one covert counterterrorism operative and was exceptional at what he did.

So exceptional, in fact, that the president had created a top-secret antiterrorism effort known as the Apex Project specifically for him. Its goal was to level the playing field with international terrorists who sought to strike Americans and American interests at home and abroad. That goal was achieved through one simple mandate — as long as the terrorists refused to play by any rules, Harvath wouldn’t be expected to either.

The Apex Project was buried in a little-known branch of DHS known as the Office of International Investigative Assistance, or OIIA for short. The OIIA’s overt mission was to assist foreign police, military, and intelligence agencies in helping to prevent terrorist attacks. In that sense, Harvath’s mission was in step with the official OIIA mandate. In reality, he was a very secretive dog of war enlisted post-9/11 to be unleashed by the president upon the enemies of the United States anywhere, anytime, with anything he needed to get the job done.

But that part of Harvath’s life was over. It had taken him years to realize that his counterterrorism career was incompatible with what he really wanted — a family and someone to come home to; someone to share his life with.

Starting relationships had never been his problem. It was keeping them going that he never could get right. Tracy Hastings was the best thing to ever happen to him and he had no intention of letting her go. For the first time in he couldn’t remember how long, Scot Harvath was truly happy.

“We don’t have to go back right away,” said Tracy, interrupting his thoughts. “We can wait until November, after the elections. There’ll be Christmas and then the inauguration in January. Unless the constitution has been rewritten and Rutledge is elected to a third term, you’ll be dealing with a completely new president.”

Harvath was about to respond when he looked out across the street and noticed a well-dressed Arab man remove a “Slim Jim” from beneath his blazer.

Popping the lock on a faded blue Peugeot, the man climbed in, shut the door and disappeared beneath the window line.

CHAPTER 3

Car thefts probably happened all the time in Paris, but Harvath had never seen one. He had also never seen such a smartly dressed criminal before.

As much as he was trying to escape his old life, his instincts were still very much attuned to the world around him. Just because a sheepdog was tired of fighting off wolves, it didn’t mean that wolves were tired of preying on sheep.

“What is it?” asked Tracy, as she followed his gaze across the street.

“Somebody just broke into that Peugeot.”

They both listened as the car’s engine came to life and the thief’s head popped back up from beneath the dashboard. Instead of driving away, though, the man just sat there.

“What’s he doing?” she asked.

Harvath was about to answer when he saw a silver Mercedes sedan approach. The thief must have seen it too because he immediately applied his blinker and pulled away from the curb, leaving the parking space to the Mercedes.

Harvath had spent enough time in cities like New York to know the lengths people would go to for a parking space, but stealing a car? This was ridiculous.

As the Peugeot slipped away, the Mercedes took its place.

No sooner was it parked than another well-dressed Arab opened the door, looked both ways up and down the street, climbed out and walked away.

Tracy looked at Harvath again. “What the hell was that all about?”

“I’ve got no idea,” he replied. “I didn’t see that guy arm his car alarm, though. Did you?”

Tracy shook her head.

For a second or two, Harvath studied the Mercedes. Then he removed a twenty-euro note, laid it on the table, and said, “Let’s go.”

Tracy didn’t argue.

On the sidewalk, Harvath took her arm and picked up the pace.

“Shouldn’t we do something?” Tracy asked.

“We are,” responded Harvath. “We’re leaving.”

“I mean, report what we saw.”

Since retiring from the counterterrorism arena, Harvath had kept an exceptionally low profile. He loathed bureaucracies more than ever, and the Paris police had one of the worst.

Nevertheless, Tracy was right. What they had just seen didn’t make sense. It could, of course, be nothing, but Harvath doubted it. “The next phone we see, we’ll call it in,” he said.

In front of them, the door of a small bookshop opened and a man in his early fifties with a gray beard, wavy salt-and-pepper hair, and a blue blazer stepped hurriedly outside. Nearly bumping into Harvath and Tracy, the man excused himself in French and continued off in the direction of the café.

Normally, Harvath wouldn’t have given it another thought, but then he caught sight of the driver of the Mercedes standing near the corner. He watched as the man appeared to study a photograph and then raised a cell phone to his ear.

The Arab spoke no more than two words. When he nodded and hung up the phone, Harvath suddenly realized what was going on.

Letting go of Tracy’s arm, he spun and took off after the man in the blazer, praying he could reach him in time.

CHAPTER 4

Harvath landed on top of the man just as the Mercedes in front of the café exploded.

Acrid, black smoke blotted out the sky as red-hot shrapnel rained down upon the street.

The violence of the explosion made Harvath’s entire body feel as if it had been crushed in a vise. The air was forced from his lungs and his ears rang with such piercing intensity he felt for sure they had to be bleeding.

Reaching to the side of his head, he touched one and then the other. Thankfully, there was no blood. He did a quick assessment of the rest of himself and when he was certain he was okay, he turned his attention to the man in the blue blazer.

Supporting his head, Harvath carefully rolled him onto his back, making sure not to move his neck. He was bleeding from a laceration near his scalp. Removing the man’s handkerchief from his breast pocket, Harvath used it to apply light pressure to the wound. He knew he needed to be careful not to exacerbate any spinal injury.

“Stay still,” Harvath said in French. “Don’t move. Are you hurt anywhere else?”

The man stared at him blankly.

Harvath was about to repeat the question when Tracy raced over to him. “Are you okay?” she asked, out of breath.

“I’m not hurt,” replied Harvath, who then motioned at the man in the blazer and said, “We need to immobilize his neck.”

Tracy knew he was right, but her EOD training had kicked in. “There could be a secondary device. We need to get away from this area before first responders arrive.”

Harvath was well aware of terrorists waiting for help to arrive at the scene of a bombing before setting off another, even deadlier explosion. “He needs an ambulance, though.”

“No,” replied the man suddenly in English. “No ambulance. No hospital.” He was trying to get to his feet.

“Stay still,” ordered Harvath.

“Scot, we need to get out of here, now,” insisted Tracy.

Harvath looked down at the man in the blue blazer and made a decision. Grabbing his upper arm, he helped him stand.

No sooner was he up than his knees buckled. Harvath caught him around the waist and with Tracy’s help, kept him upright and began to move him away from the flaming café toward the corner. All the while, Harvath kept his eyes open for any of the Arabs who’d been involved in the bombing. If they were smart, they’d be long gone, but Harvath had a very bad feeling there was more to all of this than met the eye.

There were numerous dead and wounded scattered along the sidewalk, as well as inside what was left of the café. Though Harvath and Tracy both wanted to help the others, they knew they couldn’t stop.

Making it to the end of the street, they turned the corner and could hear the wail of klaxons as first responders raced toward the scene.

Harvath and Tracy made their way halfway up the block and found a place to set the injured man down. He was shell shocked with his eyes semi-glazed over and still bleeding from the gash above his forehead.

After easing him onto a set of weathered stone steps and making sure he wasn’t going to tip over, Harvath and Tracy left him staring into the street as they moved far enough away so they could talk without being overheard.

“How’d you know that bomb was about to go off?” asked Tracy.

“The Arab who dropped the Mercedes was standing across the street. When the guy in the blue blazer passed us, the Arab looked at some sort of photo and then dialed his cell phone.”

“So it wasn’t a random attack. They had him under surveillance. He was the target.”

Harvath nodded.

“But why? Who is he?”

“That’s what I want to know,” replied Harvath as he produced the wallet he had taken from the man.

“You picked his pocket?”

“Call it professional curiosity,” he said as he withdrew the man’s driver’s license. “Evidently, our bombing target is fifty-three-year-old Anthony Nichols of Charlottesville, Virginia.”

Tracy looked over her shoulder to make sure Nichols couldn’t see what they were doing. “Virginia? What is he, CIA?”

“According to his business card he is Professor Emeritus and Resident Scholar in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia.”

“Which could mean anything.”

Harvath kept looking through the man’s wallet. It contained everything one would expect it to — credit cards, various membership cards, a small paper envelope with a hotel key card and room number written on it, as well as a smattering of other people’s battered business cards.

Harvath was just about to give up when he recognized something about the last card. Removing it from the stack, he studied it once more. It was for an insurance agent with an address in Washington, D.C., but that wasn’t the important part. What had caught Harvath’s attention was the phone number.

He had seen those ten digits before. In fact, he had them committed to memory. “I know this phone number,” he said.

“What’s it for?” asked Tracy.

“A private voice mail box belonging to the president of the United States.”

And with that Harvath knew that whoever Anthony Nichols was, he was a lot more than a professor of history at UVA.

He was about to say as much to Tracy when she looked over at where Nichols had been sitting and said, “He’s gone.”

Excerpted from THE LAST PATRIOT © Copyright 2008 by Brad Thor. Reprinted with permission by Atria Books. All rights reserved.

Buy This Book Here…

Books I have read recently:
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant Loved it!

Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels – fun, easy read.

Reading now:
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver – O.K. hard to read but I will finish it.

My to be read pile: (is growing taller since I am crocheting and knitting more than reading)
A Year by the Sea by Joan Anderson

I Feel Bad About My Neck and other thoughts on being a woman by Nora Ephron

Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Astrid & Veronika by Linda Olsson

Good Harbor by Anita Diamant – since I loved the Red Tent so much, I want to read another book by her.

Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani

The Piano Man by Marcia Preston

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Bitter Sweets by Roopa Farooki

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

I will update the list after I finish reading a book… that might be awhile.

Armin has read the complete series by BRAD THOR a great website! Another series he read is by Steve Berry and he is reading the series by James Rollins right now.

A jam packed hour + with three headliner guests!

First, Dr. B and Dangerous Lee welcome Kato Kaelin to the show.

Kato, obviously best known as OJ Simpson’s guest house tenant at the time of Nicole Brown Simpson’s and Ronald Goldman’s murder, is now on a Fox Reality Channel reality show, Gimme My Reality Show,  in which he’s competing to have his own reality show.

We’ll find out what he’s been up to since testifying in the original OJ Simpson trial, whether he’s finally got his own place to live and whether being on a reality show to win a reality show may finally signal that they’ve run out of ideas in Hollywood.

Then, speaking of trials, we have a guest who’s presided over plenty of them and won an  Emmy Award for it: Judge Cristina Perez. The stunning host of TV’s Cristina’s Court returns to the Radio Happy Hour to let us know how life has changed since being the first Emmy recipient for a TV court show.

But wait, there’s more!  Radio Jesus brings the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the The Last Patriot, Brad Thor, with him to interview legendary Hollywood producer and writer David Zucker.

The genius behind such classics as Airplane! and Naked Gun will talk about his latest controversial release An American Carol starring Kevin Farley.

All that, plus Vinny Bond returns with his Big Leather Couch to chat live with the listeners, Shawn Amos returns with another GetBack.com Pop Quiz, Justin the Weatherman, the music of Miss Knockout and we’ll take your calls at 646-652-4804.

www.blogtalkradio.com/drblogstein