Code of
Conduct
by Brad Thor
***
Brad Thor strode into Half Price Books’ flagship store
in Dallas last week on tour for Code of
Conduct, the most recent thriller in his series about ex-Navy SEAL Scot
Harvath. He insists that “Thor” is his real name, and like him, he bears an eerie resemblance to such older gods of modern
thrillerdom as James Rollins and David Baldacci, all buff-looking
literary deities with expressions as intense as those of my small hound dogs on
a scent. It’s probably hard to appear laid back when you write in the shadow of
Ragnarok.
I’d seen writers with entourages before, but none that
I recall with such obvious security guards as those traveling with Thor.
Apparently the extra precautions date from the publication of his New York Times #1 bestseller a few years
back. The plot of that book, The Last
Patriot, revolved around a supposed final revelation from the Prophet
Muhammed whose depiction inspired death threats.
For a Dallas audience, Thor’s current release (which
also debuted on the NYT bestseller
list) involved a prospect, if anything, more terrifying than the fumings of
jihadists: an artificially enhanced version of African hemorrhagic fever, a
sort of Ebola virus on steroids.
You had to live in my East Dallas neighborhood
to appreciate the media frenzy unleashed when a Liberian man visiting relatives
here was diagnosed with Ebola last fall, further infecting two nurses at a
local hospital. News helicopters circled a nearby apartment complex where one
of the nurses lived, following mass phone calls from the City of Dallas to
residents warning them of the contagion. Fortunately, the nurses survived. Unfortunately, the patient from
Liberia did not.
Back to Thor and his book. As might be expected
for someone who’s been a frequent guest of right wing guru Glenn Beck, he’s
wildly popular in Dallas, making his third appearance at the HPB flagship store
on Northwest Highway.
Still, he at least tried to brush off the insinuation
that he’s only a darling of the tea party set. “I have readers on both sides of
the aisle,” he said, citing both Newt Gingrich and a former member of President
Jimmy Carter’s administration. Concerns about national security, he said, can
and should cut across political parties. “When al-Qaeda hit the World Trade
Center, they didn’t do it because they thought it was full of Republications.”
Code of
Conduct opens with hero Harvath
speeding his beautiful current girlfriend, Lara Cordero, toward a plane that will transport her to a remote spot in Alaska. It’s a location where, Harvath hopes,
she will be safe from a deadly virus unleashed on the world by billionaire
philanthropist turned crackpot Pierre Damien. The story immediately backtracks
one week, when the head of a medical charity receives video of
gunmen breaking into a clinic in one of the most war-torn regions in the world, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Why would anyone want to exterminate a small family medical clinic, especially while wearing biohazard suits? What's in the smoking pit in the video's last frame? (And by the way, what part does beautiful Mossad spy Helena, whom
Thor appears to be saving for a sequel, have to do with all this?)
This was my first reading of a Brad Thor thriller, and
although I have some qualms, I tore through Code
of Conduct almost as fast as I put together the 500-piece dinosaur jigsaw
puzzle I scooped up from HPB on the same visit and pondering advice for readers. Frst, if you’re
going on pilgrimage to Mecca this year, take plenty of sanitizer. Second, that
flu shot you always intend to get and then find an excuse not to? This time
around, get it. Just don’t ask me why.
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