Warning. Spoiler Alert. Please Do Not Read The Following Unless You Have Already Read The Last Patriot.”
So many things contributed to the overall idea for The Last Patriot that it’s hard to pin down just one.
Not a day goes by that horrific violence isn’t committed somewhere in the world by radical Muslims in the name of Islam. Since 9/11 there have been over 11,000 deadly attacks by these people and that staggering number continues to grow daily.
How peaceful a place the world would be, I began to ask myself, if violent Islam was no longer something the world had to contend with?
But for that to happen, a major bombshell would have to be detonated from within the Muslim Diaspora itself. With that thought, things began to get interesting for me.
Exactly what would this bombshell look like? Where would it come from? I began thinking, and wondered if it was possible for part of the Islamic tradition to have been lost. What if there was something missing from Islam that, if discovered, would radically alter it?
In my research, I discovered a “paper grave” of the earliest scraps, bits, pieces, and pages of the Qur’an known to exist. The discovery was made in Yemen and the government there was very serious about keeping it under wraps. Why? I wondered.
Then there were the German scholars studying old pieces of the Koran who had died under mysterious circumstances – one in a climbing accident in 1933, and another in a plane crash in 1941. For a thriller writer, this was all too good to be true.
As my research continued, my office looked like a war room with maps tacked to the walls, newspaper articles covering my desk, and the floor stacked with books.
I had hit upon what I hoped would make an engaging and unique thriller, one with a subject matter that had never been tackled before. What if Mohammed had a final revelation and his own disciples murdered him in order to keep it quiet? What if the Qur’an was incomplete and in finding this lost revelation, Islam would be forever changed?
I knew it was a perfect plot for my main character, Scot Harvath. I liked the idea of him and Tracy Hastings on an “endless vacation” trying to decide what to do with their new life, when suddenly his old life finds him at a café in Paris and sucks him back in.
With each new adventure, I try to outdo what I have done before. I hope you find The Last Patriot extremely exciting, immensely satisfying, and full of surprises..
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