INAUGURATION DAY
Terrorism, Espionage, Romance, and Global Political Intrigue

Review by T.K. Maloy

BEIRUT – Time was in America, young men would run off to the circus for adventure; dreaming of glamour as lion tamers, strongmen, and fame as aerialist defying gravity like flying heroes; they would imagine the roar of the crowds, smell of the greasepaint; replete with visions of pretty show girls dashing about.

For the now 60-something-year-old Claude Salhani, born in Cairo and raised in Beirut by a Lebanese father and a Polish mother, the circus of the Middle East was right outside his front door, and he picked up a camera to record it all, with his natural talent soon launching him to fame as a photojournalist covering the Levantine civil war; and other strife throughout the region. Often developing film and writing news stories by candlelight.

Moving the years forward from the civil war, Salhani was to meet many interesting people of all ranks and file – from the members of various sectarian militias and their unstable commanders; US Army and Marine officers and soldiers, French Foreign Legionnaires, politicians, kings, CEOs; and many "spooks" as those in the clandestine service are sometimes called -- and in his new espionage novel "Inauguration Day" he has brought many of these types of characters together in a fictional thriller.

One that should make a top beach read, keeping you on the edge of your folding chair all day and part of the night too.

A short synopsis: Involving international political intrigue, the notorious Mexican drug cartels threatened by plans from a winning Republican presidential candidate to wage a real war on drugs, opt to finance a radical Islamist group with the goal of assassinating the candidate once he becomes US Commander in Chief. The Islamists, with the help of Iran, introduce chemical agents and concoct a not so far-fetched plan to strike their target on Inauguration Day.

Laura Atwood, a seductive CIA agent – it's never the answer that is indiscreet it's the question" --- teams up with journalist Chris Clayborne – "the public deserve one good chance at knowing the truth," -- to prevent the attack.

They are constantly one step behind (code name) Omar, the assassin, as all three characters careen across three continents in this fast-paced novel.

Part thriller, part spook novel – "Inauguration Day" takes itself seriously, but only flaw might be the occasional stereotyping of various characters; a small sin in the thriller genre.

That said, the fictional stakes are very serious – and could indeed happen in brave new world of geopolitics and asymmetrical warfare. As the terror mongers, backed by the narco-traffickers plan a biological attack on the President-elect, all that stands between this assassination is essentially Clayborne and Atwood.

Without giving too much of a spoiler alert, our brave, red-blooded journalist and the all-American, beautiful CIA agent, with a karate chop to match that sweet face, fall for each other, with no telling where this might go – into a sequel perhaps.

In addition to Clayborne and Atwood, "Inauguration Day" is replete with a dramatis personae of characters. Paul Heinz, the Beirut CIA station chief, who feels like he has "used up his quota of luck; Republican presidential candidate Richard Oren Wells, a conservative's conservative; Paco, the shrewd Latino drug baron, brazen enough to form an assassination conspiracy with the US President-elect as the target; Najah Mansour, Lebanese informant who is on the run after certain Jihadist catch wind of his activities; Phil T. Monahan, Deputy Director of Operations, CIA; and Delphine Muller-Hoeft's, a Pulitzer-winning Asian, French, German photojournalist whose career has stretched from Vietnam to Moscow.

For anyone familiar with the Middle East, Claude Salhani's writing shows a descriptive familiarity with locales ranging from Beirut to Cairo.

"The afternoon air carried abundant sounds and smells of Cairo, mingling them with the throngs of people who darted between dilapidated automobiles, donkey carts, and overcrowded buses that seemed as though they would collapse at any given moment. Gray clouds of exhaust fumes drifted slowly above the streets, adding to the decades of grime that turned once virgin-white buildings into darker shades, ranging from dark gray to ebony black. Drivers leaned furiously on their horns, adding to the cacophony of shouts emanating from street vendors trying to lure customers for a final sale of the day."

Over a span of some 30 years Mr. Salhani has traveled to 83 countries, covered 12 wars and interviewed numerous world leaders. His reports have been published in major newspapers and magazines around the world, including The Times (London), the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Diego Union Tribune, Foreign Service Journal, Middle East Policy Journal, Salon.com, The American Conservative and many others.

So in reading "Inauguration Day" you are getting a real insider's view of the often mysterious world of journalism and the even more secretive clandestine world of the so-called "spys", as seen and experienced by Salhani over the course of three decades.

(Inauguration Day is available from Amazon. 226 pp. Kindle edition $3.99)

Books by the same author
- Islam Without a Veil: Kazakhstan's Path of Moderation,
- While the Arab World Slept: The impact of the Bush years on the Middle East
- Black September to Desert Storm; a journalist in the Middle East.

Pictures by Claude Salhani.