The Ezekiel Option

Tyndale House hopes to repeat its megasuccess with Left Behind by signing Rosenberg, an evangelical Christian from an Orthodox Jewish background, for a third apocalyptic novel. Rosenberg sets his events several years after 9/11 and picks up the plot line from his The Last Days . A coup in Russia may have left beautiful CIA agent Erin McCoy dead, even as her fiancé, presidential adviser Jon Bennett, watches his "Oil for Peace" initiative fall apart. As Russia prepares for war, Israel faces annihilation and Babylon regains its original splendor, Dr. Eliezer Mordechai, former head of the Mossad and now a Christian, reflects, "The Scriptures were coming alive." He prepares a 37-page Bible-based brief known as "The Ezekiel Option," which postulates that supernatural powers will eliminate Israel's enemies. The number of exploding vehicles and dead bodies will have a "been there, done that" feel to readers of previous Rosenberg novels, but the story turns aggressively Christian, incorporating lengthy references to scriptural prophecy and the Antichrist, as well as conversion scenes. There's some heavy violence, including a beating, an elderly woman run over by a tank and a severed finger, but the book is better written and more complex than Left Behind , to which it will inevitably be compared. (July)