The Persian Gamble

I don't usually read Joel Rosenberg but a friend told me that I would like his new book.  It is a political/spy thriller taking place in the current time period with conflict between the governments of the U.S., Israel, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

The summary from the inside book cover reads: "Shot out of the air in enemy territory in the middle of the greatest international crisis since the end of the Cold War, former U. S. Secret Service agent Marcus Ryker finds himself facing an impossible task. Not only does he have to somehow elude detection and capture by Russian forces, but he must convince his own government to grant safe passage to the one man responsible for the global mayhem - Russian double agent and assassin Oleg Kraskin. While frantically negotiating with his contacts in the U.S. government, Marcus learns that the North Korean regime plans to use the international chaos as a smokescreen to sell nuclear weapons to Iran."

I thought that this was the perfect thriller except for one problem. 300+ pages into the novel his hero starts reading his Bible, Proverbs, and thinking about the grace of God right before he is going into a mission and will kill people. Is the author serious? How many international assassins muse over God's grace an hour before a kill? The hero keeps this Bible reading up for the remaining 200 pages. Is the author trying to convince the reader that an assassin is a Christian? I am pretty sure he is not. This is why I never read Rosenberg. Why take a perfectly plotted and written 500 page thriller and ruin it with 20 pages? This is disappointing!

He loses 1 star.   4 out of 5 stars.