Terrorists from around the world! Sarin gas from Syrian stockpiles! Innocents gathered at a revered sporting event unaware of impending disaster! Today's headlines? Yes. But also the heart of James Macomber's fourth novel "Sovereign Order" where, once again, Macomber has written about events in the world before they even occur. The sublimely evil villain is Rashid al-Nassef, long thought dead but actually living under Iranian protection, After several years of chafing in his "velvet prison" he receives the go-ahead to launch what will be the most destructive and horrific terrorist attack in history. The assault is multi-leveled in both its substance and in its actors. The "martyrs" who will execute the plan come from many places; a Bosnian youth designated by al-Nassef to set off the first in a series of assaults, the young Belgian woman whose fanaticism as a Christian leads her to seek the love of Mohammed, the tyrannical and abusive Albanian Muslim and his wife and child who will effect the diversionary explosion on the day of the race, the Scots lawyer seduced into Islam as a youth, and finally, al-Nassef himself who will unleash the final act of horror - a multi-layered attack on the Monaco Grand Prix intended to kill tens of thousand immediately and leave an entire nation unlivable for decades to come.
Born and raised in New England and now living in Florida with his wife Sandy, James Macomber is a former serviceman, college student, bartender, waiter, salesman, tennis instructor, actor, photographer and practicing attorney. He is the author of international legal thrillers featuring former Special Forces/NSA/CIA operator, now lawyer, John Cann - whom Booklist described as a "strong, multi-layered protagonist with the star power to keep this series going for a very long time". But Macomber's novels are about more than just Cann. They feature an ensemble cast of memorable characters centering on the 'players' at a Washington DC international law firm with very close ties to the intelligence community. Notable among them is Katherine Price, also a lawyer with a past, hers in counter-terror at the Department of Justice and the State Department. In novels that reflect and often predict actual events, "Bargained for Exchange" dealt with terrorists in academia, "Art & Part", assassinations in the Netherlands during the trial of the Pan Am 103 Lockerbie bombers, and "A Grave Breach", with atrocities, international organized crime and human trafficking against the backdrop of the Bosnian war crimes trials. It was in "A Grave Breach", that the character of Katherine Price was introduced and she became, in fact, the hero of the novel. By popular demand, she and John got together in the fourth Macomber novel, "Sovereign Order" where they attend the Monaco Grand Prix and risk losing everything to a horrifying WMD attack on the "crown jewel of formula Grand Prix racing". And soon to come is "Extraordinary Rendition" which introduces former Air Force para-rescue Jake Priestly who must battle enemies foreign and domestic, human and otherwise to save a judge whose disappearance threatens the balance of the United States Supreme Court, and: "A Walk with the Sun", a thriller set in Edinburgh and the Scottish Highlands where John and Katherine travel to attend the wedding of a young woman very close to Katherine. But the past, both personal and national, rears its ugly head and threatens the impending wedding, the long-held values of the parties, and, indeed, their very lives.
