There’s a big difference between a book that is self-published and one that is self-edited. Given the insanity of the publishing world, the former is often a writer’s best hope of getting work in print, but the latter is a recipe for disaster. It reminds one of the old saw that a lawyer who represents himself has an ass for an attorney.

The Palestine Conspiracy has compelling moments and all the twists and turns one would want in an espionage, "save-the-world," novel, but it is so poorly edited that I seriously considered not reviewing it at all because, even within its genre, the weaknesses far outweigh the strengths.

The story is set primarily in the Mid-East in the mid-1980s, before the first Iraq War and before the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was forced out of Lebanon into Tunisia. In Spirko’s version of history, a Bedouin chief has become the leader of the PLO with family ties to the royal Saudi family.

With war threatening to break out among the various Arab states and with Israel, the Prime Minister of England (her name artfully changed from Thatcher to Thayer) and the head of the PLO have hatched a plan for peace in the Mid-East and the end to world terrorism. But there are also darker plans afoot, which could turn the region into a nuclear battleground, possible dragging the U.S. and Russia along.

The ever-present enterprising reporter aided by the also ever-present enigmatic dark-haired beauty, and a young PLO operative, race against time to learn the truth and prevent disaster from being snatched from the jaws of peace. But, to be fair, stereotypical characters in spy and thriller books don’t necessarily spoil the broth, and Spirko manages to create enough depth in their personalities to keep the reader engaged. And he also does a good job of keeping the suspense high and raises enough uncertainty that the reader can never be quite sure who’s who and on what team they’re playing.

So what’s the problem? Virtually everything else.  There’s too much repetition, far too many grammatical errors, and over-used trite phrases and adjectives. In the second paragraph of the book, he uses the phrase "formidable fighting force" twice within four lines. Or, having defined a hardened silo by name, in the next sentence, we’re told, "Military planners referred to them as 'hardened' silos." His descriptions of how the Bedouin are the only people suited to desert life are interesting, but after the second or third explanation, we’ve gotten the point.

The layout of the book itself is surprisingly poor. There are extraneous commas in the middle of sentences, sentence breaks in the middle of a page forcing one to jump to the next line and double check that nothing had been left out, and punctuation errors that makes it unclear who’s talking.