Golden Dawn

Journalist Kostigen’s first novel, a fast-moving thriller with a strong sense of place, suffers from too many plot elements: a brutal Irish terrorist, a brutal Chechen terrorist, the Second Coming of Christ, the Coming of the Mahdi, the end times, stolen nuclear material, a beautiful female in peril, a hero with a dark secret, all manner of sexual deviancy, Zoroastrianism, a madman president of Iran, and various religious evildoers. Michael Shea, British News’s star foreign correspondent, has been searching for years for his IRA bomber uncle, Sean O’Shaughnessy, whom he finds in Iran. Iranian president Mahmoud Talib has recruited O’Shaughnessy along with Chechen terrorist Alu Abramov as part of a plot to detonate a nuclear weapon and achieve world domination. Toward this end, Talib’s personal assassin, Iranian secret agent Zhubin, chases Shea and Shea’s love interest, Neda Ghazali, around the globe, leaving countless bodies in his wake. Agent: Susan Raihofer, David Black Agency. (Oct.)