Horses of God by Mahi Binebine, translated by Lulu Norman

In 2003 twelve suicide bombers took their own lives in Casablanca, Morocco’s largest city, killing 41 people and injuring over one hundred people.  They detonated their explosives in a luxury hotel, a restaurant, a Jewish community center and outside of the Belgian consulate.  The bombers were young men from Sidi Moumen, a slum on the outskirts of Casablanca.  Living in dire poverty, they were recruited by a religious man who gave them training in martial arts and converted them to Islam- the religion of their country, but one that they had had no real exposure to in their difficult lives.

Mahi Binebine, the author of this book, 54 year old painter and teacher, was raised in Morocco but left the country to go to Paris as a young man to study mathematics.  He taught mathematics for some years in Paris and spent five years in New York before returning to his homeland eleven years ago.  His novels portray people suffering from trauma and loss, presented in a detached and matter of fact narrative style. 

Horses of God refers to the Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Bible, who go out to wage war on God’s enemies.  The narrator, Yachine, is one of the bombers who is telling us the story after he is dead.  Binebine gives us a few details of Yachine’s afterlife existence.  Yachine describes himself as a ghost, wandering in the world that he used to live in.  He is full of thoughts which enlighten but at the same time he is “on fire”, tortured by demons.  He experiences his loved ones’ grief at his death as poison that torments him.  He is overwhelmed to witness others like himself taking this same route to martyrdom.  Like him they learn of the Koranic promises of beautiful women in paradise waiting for them. His knowledge now is different – since all he found was death. 

The book follows the young men’s orientation into better jobs and better living situations with the help of the radical Islamist group, who proselytize against the West and against their countrymen who have given up their souls in obeisance to Western capitalism and its godlessness.  They are told that they have a weapon that this mighty foe does not – their own flesh and blood.  Yachine wants to fly away from this existence and be born anew, as God’s chosen one. 

An award winning film was made of this book, and the director, Nabil Ayouch, has joined with Mahi in building a cultural center in Sidi Moumen, a place where the youth and residents may create and perform their own works, in music, theater, and art. 

A woman who lost her son and husband in the bombings viewed the movie and took issue with the implication of poverty as the culprit, the reason for this carnage.  Yet the book doesn’t really come to this conclusion.  We have to figure this one out for ourselves, and for the other young men like Yachine.

To see the book in our catalog, click here.

Ice series / Anne Stuart

How do you like your heroes? If you like them morally ambiguous, deadly and taciturn, you may want to give the Ice series by Anne Stuart a whirl. Stuart has been at her craft for 35 years — she holds a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Romance Writers of American — and her experience is evident in the sure hand she wields when it comes to the characters, pacing and conflict in these romantic suspense stories.



The Ice series is composed of six novels so far:

1. Black Ice
2. Cold As ice
3. Ice Blue
4. Ice Storm
5. Fire And Ice
6. On Thin Ice

A heads-up if you're one of those people who has to read a series from the beginning: Here at Moore Library, we've got No. 2-5 in the series. So I haven't read the first one, Black Ice, or the most recent one, Thin Ice, which is actually only available through Amazon in their Kindle ebook format. (Next month it will come out as an audiobook.) But rest assured that these books can easily be read as standalones; Stuart provides you with what you need to know in each one and doesn't leave you wondering what's going on or who's who.

The Ice series revolves around the flinty-hearted operatives of The Committee, a shadowy international organization that fights terrorism with a ruthless, ends-justify-the-means mentality. Stuart uses a similar storyline in each: An agent on a mission from the Committee finds his (or her) plans inextricably linked to another person, typically a civilian who's in the wrong place at the wrong time. The operation goes awry, and the two are forced to go on the run together. Literal and figurative pyrotechnics ensue.

Yes, it's formulaic, but Stuart knows how to mix it up just enough to provide readers a pleasing combination of familiarity and variety.

As Stuart says herself in the video above, she's not for everyone, but if she is, she works really well. I think that's quite true. The spooks in the Ice stories aren't the gallant knights-in-white-armor types. They're stone-cold killers who often expend a great deal of energy debating whether or not to off the person they're corralled with, seeing them initially as an annoyance and liability. And when they're not in killer mode, the men in particular, they're usually cranky, mean and mocking.

But Stuart makes it work. She uses that dissonance between the two protagonists to create heat and tension. As their humanity is revealed, the male characters grow on you, as they do the the main female characters. Their crazy courtships, if you can call them that, play out amidst a backdrop of exotic locales, life-or-death situations and nefarious villains.

Nor is it the men who always save the day. One of series' main characters is a female Committee operative with formidable skills herself. But it's the relationship between the two main characters that serve as the heart of the story. And given that these are romantic suspense stories, there's never really any doubt how the end will play out. But Stuart, if she's to your taste, makes the journey worth it.

Check out this video to hear from Stuart herself on the series' conception:

The Towers: A Dan Lenson Novel of 9/11 / by David Poyer

On the morning of September 11, 2001, US Navy Commander Dan Lenson is still a little peeved about not getting his promotion to Captain. Both he and his wife, who worked for the Secretary of Defense during the previous President's tenure, think it's a bit of a slight that such a decorated officer as Dan can't be promoted--he does have a Congressional Medal of Honor. So on this day, Dan's headed to the Pentagon to talk things over with some of the upper Brass who include some former classmates--Dan is a Class of '71 Naval Academy grad--while his wife is headed to New York for a job interview after the latest round of government layoffs. As he reads the morning paper, Dan sees the usual problems, mostly foreign conflicts and political overhaul and thinks that some things just never change.

When two hijacked airplanes fly into the twin towers and then the pentagon, both Dan and his wife are drastically impacted. Dan gets out of harm's way but loses contact with Beth and its a few desperate hours before he can find out that she's safe, having just barely escaped before the collapse of Tower #1. As Beth heals and the country tries to recuperate mentally and emotionally, Dan is assigned to a SEAL Team and deployed to Afghanistan where he and his men's top mission is to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden and eliminate his Taliban regime. Though deployed to Afghanistan almost immediately, politics and red tape interfere with the military efforts. Meanwhile, Muslim-American Special Agent Aisha Ar-Rahim, though operating in Yemen, finds out just how fast the world can turn against people of her race and nationality. This is a great book on the a subject which affects everyone. (FIC POYER)

Of Gods and Men (DVD) directed by Xavier Beauvois

The DVD for this film will be released in the United States this coming July. The film is made in French, with English subtitles. It is based on the true story of a group of French Trappist monks at a monastery in Algeria, whose lives were threatened by Muslim extremists in 1996.

Massacres of civilians took place in Algeria, a former French colony, from 1994 to 1999. Intellectuals, journalists, foreigners and those exhibiting westernized conduct (such as women unveiled) – they were all included as targets in the war between Algeria’s military government and Islamic rebels. The majority of those killed, however, were simply villagers who were perceived as supporters of the hated regime, or as those who refused to join the rebel movement. Some testimony has emerged that the police and the army as well were infiltrated by the rebels, since both exhibited failure to protect citizens or to pursue the murderers and rapists. The possibility of government-instigated attacks has been raised as well, orchestrated to exonerate their own harsh tactics against civilians and to further tarnish the rebels’ reputation. While our press did not single out these events, it was a black time for Algeria and for France as well.

The film is not a violent one, although we witness the deaths of some foreign workers, and feel the danger posed by the rebels to the villagers and to the monks. There are seven monks at the monastery, joined at the film’s end by one more who returns from a journey. The first seven men we get to know slowly, seeing them at their tasks - gardening and harvesting, studying and reading, visiting the Muslim villagers and treating their sick. All these activities surround their religious occupation of prayer and celebrating mass. They sing the mass and the prayers, and this chanting is almost the only music in the film. Their lives are presented as a seamless whole – moving from work and study to the repose of contemplation, swiftly yet without haste donning their habit over their work clothes, ready to worship and to receive their God.

Caught between departing to save their skins and staying to be brutally murdered, the monks differ in how they see their situation and what they believe they ought to do. Acknowledging the risk of staying, their prior states that no outside authority has the right to make their decision for them, even though the government is begging them to leave. What becomes clear is how close they are to the villagers after so many years, and how abandoned the people would feel if the monks left. The monks’ fate is riveting as they wrestle with their decision, each in his own way struggling alone, yet bound with the others in the stillness and immensity of their shared vocation.

The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents / by Alex Butterworth

Much like our own era which has been plagued by terrorism, the latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed a distinct rise in subversive political activity in traditionalized Western societies and abroad. From approximately 1871 when the Paris Commune brought about a schism between Marxists and anarchists, countries all across Europe as well as America experienced a new wave of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary activity largely stemming from unstable economies and a strong divide between rich and poor. Underground political movements, independent groups of reactionary citizens and other socialist enterprises began forming as never before. Led by charismatic leaders who preached change and transformation, promoting new ideas and outright revolution towards the powers that be, the situation inevitably gave way to acts of insurrection which, then as now, were perpetrated through aggressive coercion and random acts of violence.

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Author Alex Butterworth well-characterizes the period by describing a collection of heretofore unknown about revolutionaries who never quite changed the world but nonetheless contributed some interesting anecdotes to history. It was an age, not unlike our own, in which middle-class citizens, ordinary working folk and others not affiliated with any of the popular radical ideologies remained subjects to fear, prone to anxiety over the instability of governments and the rising tide of rebellion. Staged protests and peaceful demonstrations gave rise to bombings, assassinations and other violent exploits. As aggressive power struggles spilled over into the political arena, creating diplomatic messes and wreaking further havoc internationally, things escalated into all out wars (World War I specifically) between nations and empires and, in the case of Russia, a full-blown revolution.
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The wave of upheaval a century ago was not only representative of today's world in terms of the paranoia, suspicion and skepticism, it was strikingly familiar claims Butterworth, almost a duplicate reproduction of the conflicting, sometimes arbitrary attitudes about our society. Mistrust of elected officials and ruling entities accompanied a pervading sense of unrest back then, just as nowadays partisan politics and terrorism has created instability even within our more prosperous New World Order. History repeats itself. (335.83 BUTTERWO)

International Intrigue

A journalist for the BBC during WWII, Frederick Forsyth once tried to 'hop a ride' on a D-Day invasion craft. His adventurism coupled with experience as a global correspondent have helped firmly establish him at the pinnacle of the political thriller genre. Among his many popular works, Day of the Jackal (1971) and The Afghan (2007) are two of his most enthralling epics.

Day of the Jackal (1971)
Rebuff in France over the Algerian question reached its apex in 1962 when, in a move unpopular with many, President De Gaulle withdrew all French troops and granted sovereignty to the North African state. Among the outraged, members of the French OAS (Secret Army Organisations) were former soldiers and colonists who, feeling betrayed after sacrifices made on their country's behalf, decided retaliation was only too necessary. Between the summer of 1962 and spring 1963, a string of unsuccessful assassination attempts were made on De Gaulle’s life. With their ranks dwindling and their cause dying, one last option assuaged the OAS: hire an outside professional killer who, acting alone, would eliminate their target. Following an intense search, a meeting of the strictest confidence was held in Vienna where 3 OAS men and one stranger discussed details of the operation. The stranger--codename "The Jackal"--ultimately agreed to kill the French President for half a million dollars. Up until and beyond the pinned date, no OAS or allied partisan would see or hear from the Jackal accept through the designated middle-man. The OAS now had their last and best ‘shot’ to avenge their betrayal.

Even knowing De Gaulle died--peacefully in his sleep--in 1970 and that there was likely no such lone gunman plot (the other attempts were real enough), you can’t help but be caught up in the drama of this taut thriller. The Jackal's methodical preparations are as intriguing as the climax while the intelligence bureau's counter-operations only add to the appeal. Forsyth's steady, detached style may deter some with its lack of cliffhanger suspense. But his ability to create fascination out of one man's inconspicuous maneuvers has a way of overriding the desire for more action. The film version of this book came out in 1973 and stars Edward Fox as the Jackal. (FIC FORSYTH)
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The Afghan (2007)
Army Col. Mike Martin is well-acquainted with the Middle East. Since his time spent in Iraq as a boy up until his present life as a paratrooper, he’s become familiar with all aspects of the volatile region, even learning the language well enough to translate several remote dialects. But when the intelligence community desperately needs information on a major Al-Qaeda operation, even they know the hard truth: there’s no way to get what they need aside from personally infiltrating the enemy, an impossibility because no one (not even Martin) is capable of doing so.

Even the only conceivable option, an Afghani political prisoner in quarantine, is a non-option. Izmat Khan is a former Taliban commander who even now, after 5 years of interrogation at Guantanamo, remains a staunch fundamentalist ally of Al-Qaeda. Yet a twist of fate many years earlier helped make Khan and Martin loyal friends. Is it even possible? Could Martin’s shared knowledge and intimacy with Khan allow Martin—disguised as Khan—to ‘become an enemy’ among the enemy?

Forsyth writes with such incomparable authority and structure that little room is left for fault-finding. The Afghan could almost pass as a geography textbook, so remarkable is the detail, and yet the story's intriguing enough captivate any politically naïve reader. The action, as with other Forsyth classics, is less personal--war casualties described like a newscast. But it’s the broader picture that’s indirectly intended, fate and conflict viewed at a global scale. With its distinctly middle-eastern attributes, The Afghan shares more than a few parallels with Lawrence of Arabia and readers gung-ho on Indiana Jones won't be disappointed. (FIC FORSYTH)