I enjoyed Joel Rosenberg's books in his Last Jihad series and enjoyed The Twelfth Imam, the first book in his new political thriller series, in which tensions are rising in the Middle East as Iran's president vows to annihilate the U.S. and Israel.
However, I did have some in-going reservations about reading The Twelfth Imam. My hesitancy stemmed from a concern about Rosenberg being too heavy-handed in presenting his Christian-oriented view of the world and about being preached to. While my concerns were at times warranted, Rosenberg's strong religious viewpoints were, for the most part, expressed in a way that made them seem like they were an integral part of the plot. Aside from this criticism, The Twelfth Imam is a page-turner from beginning to end and will keep you glued to your seat. The suspense is continuous and the characters are pretty well-developed and generally believable.
Not surprising to me was that the ending was largely open-ended, thus paving the way for the second book in this series that seems to be ripped from the headlines, called The Tehran Initiative, which I plan to read in order to find out "how the plot thickens." The Twelfth Imam is a book that I think most thriller lovers, with the exception of those from the Muslim faith, will enjoy.
