A well written action thriller, with some absolutely unbelievable premises. Sometimes I had a problem with the premises to an extent that interfered with my enjoyment of the story.

If you can ignore this one huge shortcoming and if you believe, like apparently the author does, that it is the West’s responsibility and fault that the nice Muslims hate us, the book is enjoyable.

It is a first in a series of books with the same set of heroes (that’s what they have to be to accomplish what they do). The book is extremely suspicious of the U.S. Government agencies (not unusual) and sees the future as a linear extension of the present. Since the present in which the book was written has a war going on in Iraq, this war is still going strong with enormous U.S. losses at the end of the fist term of the a future president (G. W. Bush is not the president anymore).
The Muslims have grievances that justify attacking innocent civilians and are generally nice people made miserable and violent by U.S. and European policies. Or so the author would have us believe. If only the U.S. would change its policies in the Middle East, the nice Arabs would live in peace with everybody. We have to respect their culture and they will respect ours. So says one of the characters and so confirm some of the others who help him. My impression is that he speaks for the author.

I really would have enjoyed the book much more if it had a more realistic depiction of the world. As it is I can’t recommend it – the dark view of the West and distorted picture of the Islamic world are really annoying.