The Disciple
The Disciple Review
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Stephen Coonts seems to have a crystal ball on his desk that provides him with the material for whatever subject he chooses to visit in his most recent novel. Of course, Coonts is not a fortune teller; he is simply possessed of the ability to believe that which he sees in front of him, analyze it and extrapolate. Indeed, it is in much the same manner that his long-running Jake Grafton character functions. Call it an informed guess, but the result is edge-of-the-seat, page-turning reality presented as fiction.
THE DISCIPLE, Coonts’s latest novel, brings together Grafton and his protégé, Tommy Carmellini, once again for an excursion into the heart of the darkness of the Middle East. Carmellini, a retired jewel thief turned reluctant CIA operative, has a skill set that serves him well in whatever situation Grafton throws him into, which has never been truer than in THE DISCIPLE. Beginning just after the bombing of a Syrian nuclear reactor (which was never acknowledged as having existed to begin with), Grafton, a former Navy admiral now with the CIA, finds himself facing the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. Despite the denials of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it is obvious that the Iranian nuclear weapons program exists; the question is what will be done with it.
Grafton inserts Carmellini into Tehran for some clandestine boots-on-ground intelligence, and watching the two men work from opposite ends of a very long, sharp and dangerous stick is worth the price of admission to THE DISCIPLE all by itself. Carmellini, masquerading as a passport approval clerk at a foreign embassy, slowly but surely insinuates himself into the Iranian political resistance movement, a nerve-wracking proposition in and of itself given the violently repressive attitude of the government. It is through his association with the resistance movement that Carmellini is able to gain information about Iran’s ultimate plan for its nuclear weapons and to transfer the intelligence to Grafton.
What they ultimately discover is that Ahmadinejad plans to martyr Iran and then lead the fundamentalist Muslim world into the ultimate holy war against Israel and the United States. The President, notwithstanding the evidence in front of him, refuses proactive action against Iran, leaving it to Grafton and Carmellini to work within the parameters that are outlined for them. The result is heart-stopping: Iran begins a countdown to Armageddon, while the United States is forced to play catch-up from a reactive position as the fate of the world hangs in the balance.
THE DISCIPLE is stuffed to bursting with Coonts’s trademark technology updates, consisting of a cornucopia of items that provide Exhibits A through Z to the proposition that peace is ultimately won through superior firepower. Coonts does not get bogged down in a technical description of the nuts and bolts of which does what and to whom, instead focusing very closely and graphically on cause and effect. He also takes pains, through character development, to examine the social and religious complexities that exist within Iran, which is slowly tearing itself apart from within. An exciting work on a number of levels, THE DISCIPLE will be a winner for fans of military and espionage novels alike.
— Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
The Disciple Feature
- ISBN13: 9780312372835
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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