I just finished Scorpion’s Gate, a spy-military thriller by Richard A. Clarke. Clarke was the chief counterterrorism advisor to the National Security Council under the later Clinton and early Bush admins. I heard him speak at the American Library Association conference in Orlando in 2005, on his nonfiction book, Against All Enemies, so I was interested in this novel, which bears the cover blurb, “Sometimes you can tell more truth through fiction.”
The scenario is this: A few years from now, Iraq has been more or less stabilized under a pro-Iranian Shi’ite government, although an interminable Sunni insurgency continues to smolder. The House of Saud has been overthrown in a coup by religious and military leaders, and Saudi Arabia has been named “Islamyah.” Within the ruling council, the Shura (which includes former al-Qaeda members), there is tension between radical Islamists, who want to continue and redouble the Sauds’ policy of enforcing Sharia law at home and encouraging Wahhabist revolution abroad, and modernizers, who want Islamyah to become less dependent on its oil and develop a democratic government and a “knowledge society.” The U.S. has broken off all relations with Islamyah (meaning we must buy oil elsewhere) and is officially committed to overthrowing the revolutionary government and restoring the Sauds to power. Meanwhile, there has been a new wave of terrorist bombings in the Gulf States. The question is who is behind it – Islamyah, or Iran, which is dreaming of a greater Shi’ite state encompassing all Shi’ite Arab populations around the Persian Gulf. American intelligence analysts blame Iran, but the Secretary of Defense is unshakeably committed to blaming Islamyah (and to invading Islamyah and restoring the Sauds). Any more would be a spoiler.
I enjoyed it. The characters are not too deeply developed – none of them seems to have any life or any interests outside of geopolitics – but that is typical of the few examples of this genre I have read. Otherwise, the story is fast-paced, exciting, and full of apparently realistic detail, attributable to Clarke’s inside view of this sort of action and intrigue. The combat scenes in particular are very vivid, with just the right amount of military technojargon to make the scene come alive without baffling civilians.
Has anyone else read it? What did you think?