The Saudi Religious Police

Saudi Arabia recently announced that it had stripped its religious police of its power to arrest people when carrying out its duties to enforce sharia, Islamic law. It's a subject I've researched and written about throughout my Sasha Del Mira espionage series—Trojan Horse, Sasha Returns, Arab Summer and my most recent novel, On Home Soil. The Saudi religious police, known variously by the names the Mutawwa’in, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (I’m not kidding), and Haia, enforce the strict rules of the Islamic code of behavior as outlined in sharia.

For example, the religious police will arrest women who are not "properly" clothed. That means not wearing an abaya—a formless black robe concealing any aspect of her anatomy—or a hijab—a head scarf covering her hair. Or caught driving a car. Or not accompanied by a male family member or husband; male friends or boyfriends won’t do. Or anyone, man or woman, caught drinking alcohol, using drugs or smoking tobacco in public. That’s not an exhaustive list.

What the new Saudi directive means is that the religious police will have to report those violating sharia to the police or the drug police instead of making the arrests themselves. It's not clear what that means in practical terms, but it doesn't sound like much of a change.

The Saudi regime, which has been led on and off by the Al Saud family for centuries, and which passes down its leadership exclusively through members of its royal family, was founded and is still firmly rooted in the Wahhabi sect of the Sunni Muslim faith. Wahhabism is an especially strict and reactionary interpretation of the Muslim religion, very similar to that of ISIS’ interpretation of it.

That's a scary concept, although the Saudi regime learned decades ago to pacify the Saudi masses with generous social welfare programs to keep the peace and tamp down any potential uprisings that could unseat them. That's also a fundamental element of my Sasha Del Mira series.

Lately, with the collapse of oil prices from over $100 a barrel in 2014 to the mid-20s per barrel in the first quarter of 2016, recently recovering only to the $40 per barrel level, the Saudi regime is under increasing pressure. It’s consuming its financial reserves to maintain funding of its social programs. That is it’s only means of keeping the average Saudi schlub from rising up against the Saudi royal family billionaires who live in the gilded Royal Palace and spend indiscriminately on anything and everything they want.

Think the Saudi 1% trying to placate Bernie Sanders by stuffing billions of dollars worth of caviar and fine French pate down his gullet.

So rather than looking at this recent curtailment of the powers of the Saudi religious police as a major social change, see it only as another means of the Saudi royals placating a restive Saudi public. A Saudi public that feels ever more oppressed by its elitist regime that’s been dominating the Saudi economy and culture for generations.

The situation isn’t stable.

It makes a good backdrop for thrillers.

Stay tuned.

On Home Soil - Sasha Del Mira Thriller #4

In the fourth installment of my Sasha Del Mira thriller series, On Home Soil, CIA assassin Sasha Del Mira and her agency cohort, Tom Goddard, have become involved in a steamy romance, and both begin questioning their motivation to continue in the spying game. Then ISIS sends its top battlefield commander in Syria, Omar the Albino, to the States to train and mobilize its underground cells to bring its jihad to the U.S. As a result, Sasha and Tom are thrust into an all-out effort to thwart ISIS’ terror.

Click on cover to buy

Omar quickly organizes a series of kidnappings, and ISIS videos begin surfacing on the Internet of American hostages in orange jumpsuits. A CIA plan to enlist the American public in a grass-roots effort to help prevent ISIS terror by reporting on any suspicious activities and supporting agents in the field, begins to complicate Sasha and Tom’s work. Part of the program—termed the Patriot Program—gives rise to an armed nationwide group bent on vigilante justice that threatens to target anyone fitting a Muslim profile.

So not only do Sasha and Tom have to track down Omar before he unleashes a wave of beheadings and terrorist attacks on home soil, but they have to stop the rogue Patriots before social chaos erupts.

I started the novel over a year ago after ISIS surfaced as regional terrorist force in Syria and Iraq. I did most of my research from daily news reports, much the same as I did in researching and writing Arab Summer, the third Sasha Del Mira thriller, based on the Arab Spring uprising a few years ago. I believed that by basing On Home Soil on the idea that ISIS would bring its terror to the West, I was creating a fictional story by extrapolating from the news. As I continued writing I saw ISIS unfold from a regional Middle-Eastern menace to a group with global terrorist activities. I finished the novel in August and have been working with my editor since then. Little did I know what would actually happen in Paris last month, and that we would need to gird ourselves for the possibility of similar attacks here in the States.

I hope you’ll read On Home Soil for what it’s intended to be—a fast-paced action thriller based on current events—and not my attempt to predict what might occur here at home.

The Sasha Del Mira Thriller series (click on cover to buy on Amazon):

CIA assassin Sasha Del Mira and Tom Goddard, her CIA cohort, are involved in a steamy romance, and are questioning their motivation to continue in the spying game, when they’re thrust into an all-out effort to thwart ISIS’ plans to bring their jihad and terror to the U.S.

Read Sample

Buy: US UK

Former CIA spy Sasha Del Mira comes out of retirement to avenge her husband’s murder by Islamic terrorists and stop their Arab Spring uprising to topple the Saudi government.

Read Sample

Buy : US UK

A young Sasha Del Mira must stop multiple attempts to topple the Saudi regime by murdering a Saudi prince, who is like a father to her, and replacing him with one of his sons as a puppet of a Muslim terrorist group.

Read Sample

Buy : US UK

Daniel Youngblood, a world-weary investment banker falls in love with an exotic spy and then teams up with her to stop a Muslim terrorist plot to cripple the world’s oil capacity.

 Read Sample
   

Buy : US UK

Arab Summer - Sasha Del Mira Thriller #3

My third Sasha Del Mira thriller, Arab Summer is about an Arab Spring uprising in Saudi Arabia led by fundamentalist Shiite Muslims whose goal is to topple the Sunni Saudi regime and use its oil riches to hold the West hostage.  It's the third installment of the Sasha Del Mira series.  Sasha, the heroine of Trojan Horse and Sasha Returns, is a former concubine to the Saudi royal family who was recruited by the CIA as an informant, and later as an assassin.

The uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt that brought down Ben Ali, Qaddafi and Mubarak—dictators who brutally persecuted, repressed and murdered their citizens—started Arab Spring in 2011.  Since then, over a dozen other Arab states witnessed at least some level of civil unrest challenging their governments, including the ongoing civil war in Syria between the al-Assad regime and opposition forces. 

The darker side of the Arab Spring movement surfaced in the form of murderous acts by Islamic fundamentalists, not against repressive governments, but against innocents.  ISIS grew out of disparate groups of armed fundamentalists, the vacuum created by the fall of some of the governments during Arab Spring, and the civil war in Syria.

Saudi Arabia is considered one of the most stable regimes in the Arab states, but the notion of an Arab Spring uprising there isn't so far-fetched.  Protests, some with 70,000 participants, over anti-Shiite discrimination, labor rights, release of prisoners held without charge or trial, and for equal representation in key government offices began in Saudi Arabia in 2011 and continue today.

Imagine this: a group of disaffected Shiite Muslim extremists seizes the Grand Mosque in Mecca—Islam’s holiest site—during the final days of the Hajj, the annual Muslim holy pilgrimage, and takes thousands of hostages.  Their leader says that among them is the Mahdi, the prophesied “Redeemer of Islam” who will drive out all infidels from holy Saudi soil and lead Muslims into a new era.  They broadcast their demands from loudspeakers on the mosque’s minarets, including ceasing oil exports to the US and the expulsion of foreign civilians and military personnel from Saudi Arabia.  Saudi forces try unsuccessfully for weeks to retake the mosque, sustaining heavy casualties.  The Saudis ultimately enlist the help of foreign military forces to drive out the militants.

That actually happened in 1979.

In Arab Summer something like that does again.  Saif Ibn Mohammed al-Aziz, a ruthless terrorist, leads a Muslim fundamentalist group bent on a bloody coup of the Saudi Arabian government via an Arab Spring uprising.  As a prelude to his plan, he has Sasha Del Mira’s husband, Daniel, murdered.  Sasha comes out of retirement to avenge Daniel’s death and to help Tom Goddard, her old mentor at the CIA, stop the plot, putting her face to face with Saif, her former ally—and lover.

I've just released the fourth installment in the series, On Home Soil, in which Sasha must stop an ISIS plot to bring its jihad to US soil. I hope you'll give all the Sasha Del Mira thrillers in the series a try.

The Sasha Del Mira Series (click on covers to buy on Amazon):

CIA assassin Sasha Del Mira and Tom Goddard, her CIA cohort, are involved in a steamy romance, and are questioning their motivation to continue in the spying game, when they’re thrust into an all-out effort to thwart ISIS’ plans to bring their jihad and terror to the U.S.

Read Sample

Buy: US UK

Former CIA spy Sasha Del Mira comes out of retirement to avenge her husband’s murder by Islamic terrorists and stop their Arab Spring uprising to topple the Saudi government.

Read Sample

Buy : US UK

A young Sasha Del Mira must stop multiple attempts to topple the Saudi regime by murdering a Saudi prince, who is like a father to her, and replacing him with one of his sons as a puppet of a Muslim terrorist group.

Read Sample

Buy : US UK

Daniel Youngblood, a world-weary investment banker falls in love with an exotic spy and then teams up with her to stop a Muslim terrorist plot to cripple the world’s oil capacity.

Read Sample       

Buy : US UK

Merry Christmas to Janet and Hank Lender

I ran a post on September 2nd, which would have been my father's 88th birthday, entitled "Hank Lender's Photographic Legacy."  I've reproduced the post below, with the addition of the cover photo I used for Vaccine Nation, my current thriller.  That photo, from the dock at Mom and Dad's house on Twin Lakes, PA, was the last he ever took.  Mom passed away a year and a half ago, and we sold the lake house just last week.  Now the photo has extra meaning.   Merry Christmas, Mom and Dad.

Copyright 2005 by Herman J. Lender

Dad was an accomplished man on many levels, including having a good sense of humor.  I was with him when Dr. Kimmel, his cancer surgeon, visited him the night before his final surgery.  The odds weren't good, and one of Dr. Kimmel’s final comments was that Dad’s chances of survival were, "miniscule."  After Dr. Kimmel left, Dad said, "Well, at least I don't have to worry about running out of money."

"The Man in White"
Copyright 2005 by Herman J. Lender

Then he got serious.  He made a rueful comment about "all this knowledge" he'd accumulated, and that it would pass on with him.  Dad seemed to be interested in just about everything—classical music, photography, opera, The Beatles, bread baking, gardening, finance, running; the list is endless—and after high school was totally self educated.  We talked about his legacy and I made the point that the knowledge he accumulated, his interest in things, and his intense approach to learning about them was something that would be carried on through his four sons and all his grandchildren.  Ironically, one thing we didn't talk about was his photography, a life-long interest of his.

Copyright 2005 by Herman J. Lender

My brothers and I grew up hearing about Leicas, Nikons, Hasselblad's, telephoto lenses, light meters and f-stops.  Dad built basement darkrooms in each of the three houses in Mt. Tabor we lived in growing up, then another in New Canaan after I went off to college.  We all experienced the magic of going into the darkroom with Dad and watching under a dim yellow bulb as Dad's 35mm black-and-white images appeared in the developer bath.  He taught us how to pick up a photo from the developer bath by the corner with the plastic tweezer, let it drain, then dunk it in the fixative, then in the water bath.  Sometimes I detect a scent that reminds me of those chemicals and it always takes me back to those days.

After Mom died a year ago, we went through all of Mom and Dad's things to close up her apartment.  They had tons of his framed prints on the walls and stacked in boxes in the closets; they’re still sitting in my attic because my brothers and I haven't finished divvying them up.  Most of Dad's 35mm negatives and his color slides are upstairs in their house at Twin Lakes.  But after we closed up Mom's apartment, I put all of Dad's digital collection—he converted to digital in 2000—on 16 GB USB flash memory drives and sent one to each of my brothers.  So that's another part of Dad's legacy we can all carry on.

Copyright 2005 by Herman J. Lender

The cover photos for all three of my books—Trojan Horse, The Gravy Train and Bull Street—are Dad's.  Dad's originals are presented here, before I cropped and Photoshopped the first two so the lettering would stand out on the covers.  Most think the pictures are of Wall Street, which was the image I intentionally tried to evoke based on the content of my books, but they're actually of Second Avenue and the 59^th St. Bridge, taken from the balcony of Manette’s and my 24^th floor apartment at 58^th St. and Second Avenue in New York City.  Dad titled the photo for the Trojan Horse cover, at top left, "The Man in White."  If you look closely, you can see a man dressed completely in white jaywalking through the heavy traffic (he’s inside the “D” of “Lender” on the book’s cover).  The photo for the cover of The Gravy Train, at center, is about the same shot taken at night.  The Bull Street cover photo is at left, a night shot of the 59^th St. Bridge.

Hank Lender's Photographic Legacy

"The Man in White"
Copyright 2005 by Herman J. Lender

Dad was an accomplished man on many levels, including having a good sense of humor.  I was with him when Dr. Kimmel, his cancer surgeon, visited him the night before his final surgery.  The odds weren't good, and one of Dr. Kimmel’s final comments was that Dad’s chances of survival were, "miniscule."  After Dr. Kimmel left, Dad said, "Well, at least I don't have to worry about running out of money."

Then he got serious.  He made a rueful comment about "all this knowledge" he'd accumulated, and that it would pass on with him.  Dad seemed to be interested in just about everything—classical music, photography, opera, The Beatles, bread baking, gardening, finance, running; the list is endless—and after high school was totally self educated.  We talked about his legacy and I made the point that the knowledge he accumulated, his interest in things, and his intense approach to learning about them was something that would be carried on through his four sons and all his grandchildren.  Ironically, one thing we didn't talk about was his photography, a life-long interest of his.

Copyright 2005 by Herman J. Lender

My brothers and I grew up hearing about Leicas, Nikons, Hasselblad's, telephoto lenses, light meters and f-stops.  Dad built basement darkrooms in each of the three houses in Mt. Tabor we lived in growing up, then another in New Canaan after I went off to college.  We all experienced the magic of going into the darkroom with Dad and watching under a dim yellow bulb as Dad's 35mm black-and-white images appeared in the developer bath.  He taught us how to pick up a photo from the developer bath by the corner with the plastic tweezer, let it drain, then dunk it in the fixative, then in the water bath.  Sometimes I detect a scent that reminds me of those chemicals and it always takes me back to those days.

After Mom died a year ago, we went through all of Mom and Dad's things to close up her apartment.  They had tons of his framed prints on the walls and stacked in boxes in the closets; they’re still sitting in my attic because my brothers and I haven't finished divvying them up.  Most of Dad's 35mm negatives and his color slides are upstairs in their house at Twin Lakes.  But after we closed up Mom's apartment, I put all of Dad's digital collection—he converted to digital in 2000—on 16 GB USB flash memory drives and sent one to each of my brothers.  So that's another part of Dad's legacy we can all carry on.

Copyright 2005 by Herman J. Lender

The cover photos for all three of my books—Trojan Horse, The Gravy Train and Bull Street—are Dad's.  Dad's originals are presented here, before I cropped and Photoshopped the first two so the lettering would stand out on the covers.  Most think the pictures are of Wall Street, which was the image I intentionally tried to evoke based on the content of my books, but they're actually of Second Avenue and the 59^th St. Bridge, taken from the balcony of Manette’s and my 24^th floor apartment at 58^th St. and Second Avenue in New York City.  Dad titled the photo for the Trojan Horse cover, at top left, "The Man in White."  If you look closely, you can see a man dressed completely in white jaywalking through the heavy traffic (he’s inside the “D” of “Lender” on the book’s cover).  The photo for the cover of The Gravy Train, at center, is about the same shot taken at night.  The Bull Street cover photo is at left, a night shot of the 59^th St. Bridge.

Hank Lender would have been 88 years old today.  Happy Birthday, Dad.

Reflections on the Past Months

It's now been over four months since I launched Trojan Horse. My attitude at the time was "What have I got to lose?" after deciding to commit myself to writing full-time and seeking out an agent to take the traditional publishing route. Since then a lot has happened for me. Trojan Horse made it to #1 in Spy Stories and Tales of Intrigue and to the top 15 in Kindle books. I released The Gravy Train, a 50 thousand-word novella, which is now #14 in Suspense Thrillers, and a week ago I released Bull Street, another thriller set on Wall Street during the financial crisis. Bull Street is now #29 in Suspense Thrillers. So I now have three books in the top 40 in the overall Thriller category on Kindle. I've had an offer of representation from a top-notch New York literary agent and, separately, have been offered a publishing deal. I'm at work on my next thriller, the first chapter of which is excerpted at the end of Bull Street. I consider it's been a successful few months.

As a result, I'm reflecting on my situation. I'm grateful to be in this position, one I never could have scripted back in mid-January when I released Trojan Horse. And that means I'm grateful to those who've read my books. Those of you I've heard from have been incredibly supportive and generous with your comments and reviews.

I feel like I've only scratched the surface in my education on the epublishing world, but I do know that it's here to stay and will undoubtedly dominate the publishing world reasonably soon, in years, not decades. It's made it possible for me to have three books out in less time than I would have needed to find a publisher--and then start the 12 to 18 month process of getting one book out. The advent of the Kindel, Nook, Smashwords and Kobo platforms allows an efficient mechanism for authors to get their work in front of readers quickly.

I don't know where all this takes me but I have a pretty good idea: I'm working as hard as I ever have in my life, and as an investment banker I worked hard; it's a punishing career. But now I have a constituency out there--readers--that I don't want to let down, so I feel like I need to deliver more you'll enjoy reading. I'm excited about Bull Street; it's my favorite of the books I've written so far. It's been a great few months and I'm looking forward to what comes next.