Customer Reviews
Brilliant Islamic thriller - By: Ms. Ruth Walsh, 30 Aug 2008 
Thriller authors generallly need a real world enemy to wrap their story around. Few are like Michael Chrichton & Lee Child who invent everything. No, for most thriller authors, it is the threat of the moment that matters. Nazism & Communism have had their day although some horror writers still use them, James Herbert & Sean Hutson, but today belongs to radical Islam. You only have to read the Soft Target thrillers by Conrad Jones to realise how some thriler writers can bring contempory Islamic issues into violent action fantasy.
Brad Thor has cranked out several very good thrillers, but "The Last Patriot" is one of his best.
Former Navy SEAL, Secret Service agent & Presidential troubleshooter Scot (with one "t") Harvath is in Paris with his girlfriend Tracy Hastings, who is still recovering from injuries received in her job as a Naval demolitions specialist. Scot observes a car being stolen & another car pulling into the vacated parking space. His intuitive sense of action is aroused & he pulls Tracy away from the cafe where they were sitting. Passing a bookstore, a stranger in a hurry bumps into them & starts crossing the street. Scot senses trouble & covers the stanger with his own body as a car bomb goes off.
Borrowing liberallly from Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code", Thor plunges Harvath into a labybrinth of clues, assasins, plots & counter-plots as a search for the prophet Mohammed's rumored last revelation which has the potential to change the nature of Islam.
The action never stops. A former CIA assassin, Matthew Dowd, now a dedicated convert to Islam & a stone-cold killer is murdering his way toward the secret. The President's man is looking for the secret. Soon the CIA & FBI are involved. Thomas Jefferson's 1805 war against the Barbary pirates is invoked as other aspects of Jefferson's wide ranging interests & genius. The plot moves from one bit of violence to another, with nary a thoughtful moment in between. In other words, this a perfectly satisfying thriller, an American flag waver.
Thor's characters have a bit of depth. Scot Harvath's exploits just make you want to stand up & cheer (provided you support the United States & its goals). Thor is particularly aggressive in his views of radical Islam & the polticallly correct multiculturalists in the United States & elsewhere who are yielding democracy to a theocracy.
As noted, the plot borrows heavily from "The DaVinci Code" with the protagonist having to piece together bits of a puzzle while the bad guys are trying to kill the good guys. From time to time, Thor asks the reader to accept a jump in logic or an implausible happening, such as hairbreadth escapes. But Thor is a strong enough writer to carry the reader over the occasional chasm.
The ending, however, is on the weak side & a real stretch. I don't know if Thor ran out of time or ideas, but the last few pages weren't nearly as satisfying as those that went before.
Still, for thriller fans, "The Last Patriot" is a wonderfully jingoistic, red, white & blue story, filled with All-American heroes & nasty bad guys. Great fun reading!
