Dead Heat May 22, 2008

If you find political fiction, end-times fiction, or any other fiction even remotely interesting, then get to a library or book store and pick this up… yesterday. Short of actually being there, it is the most terrifying thing you will experience. I have never, I repeat, never, read a fictional book that scared me until I read this. Not only did it scare me, it shocked me. Time and time again, just when you think it cannot get worse, it gets worse. Not worse as in bad material to read, but terrifying things happen in this book. (However, in order to get the full feel of it, you’d be advised to read the first four books in Joel C. Rosenberg’s series, starting with The Last Jihad.)

Mr. Rosenberg’s books have a scary way of coming true. For example, he wrote about a suicide airplane attack on a target within the United States… in January of 2001. That’s just the beginning… I’d tell you more, but I don’t want to ruin it for you.

Essentially, the book opens as the President of the United States, James MacPherson, prepares to give the keynote speech at his party’s national convention. His time is up and he is preparing to pass the baton on to his handpicked successor. But a terror plot is in the works. It’s bigger and badder than anything that’s ever been launched on the United States, and the government is completely on the wrong track.

Jon Bennett, the character whom we have spent our time with for the course of Rosenberg’s series, is back, though in a less important role than the one he fills in the earlier books. He is now married, and he and his wife are doing relief work in Africa, looking to stay away from politics, when he receives a call informing him of how he can stop the next big attack on the United States. Sound like a nail-biter?

It is at first. But as the book goes on, Rosenberg drops one bombshell after another on us. We don’t expect for things to happen the way they do, and it’s not abundantly clear where he’s heading with all of this (unlike in the Left Behind series where we could predict what was going to happen). It’s terrifying stuff… makes every other work of political fiction I’ve ever read look like picture books.

What is so ghoulish about Rosenberg’s work? As I said before, it comes true. While he makes no claim of being a prophet, he has spent much time analyzing the End Times Prophecy of the Bible and the current political winds and situations, and he keeps being right. Again and again and again. Some of them are not far-fetched, but he wrote about Yasser Arafat’s death before Yasser Arafat’s death. Published it, in fact. Other, more far-fetched ones? The entire premise of the fourth book, the Copper Scroll, is that there is a buried treasure worth billions of dollars somewhere in the Middle East, taken from the Temple years ago. Shortly after the book’s publication, a newspaper report came out about research for that very thing.

Truthfully, I cannot more highly recommend a book than I recommend this one. Buy it. Read it. And, unless you’re sure of your destiny, be afraid. Be very afraid.

Ratings on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 least, 10 most, 0 nonexistent:
Violence: 7
Sexually Graphic Content: 0
Language: 0
Character Development and Strength: 7
Plot:10+

Overall: 10