I just finished reading “The Scorpion’s Gate” by former Terrorist Czar and every Democrat’s favorite Republican, Richard A. Clarke. I cannot say that it was the best fiction I’ve read. It suffers from far too much of the novice storyteller’s filling in the gaps of the reader’s knowledge with unrealistic expository dialog that the author has to strain to explain. I grant, however, that I can think of no other way the author could have conveyed the great depth and nuance of his understanding of Middle Eastern politics and geo-strategy more as efficiently and more artfully. Also, the ending is fairly anti-climactic, as are all novels premised on the idea of a cabal trying to drive world-altering events forward, only to be foiled by better-intentioned protagonists.
Within these limitations, however, Clarke does manage, as the jacket cover promises, to tell the truth more effectively through fiction. Clarke’s story begins a few years down the road. America has been invited to leave Iraq by the now Shiite dominated parliament. A popular revolution in Saudi Arabia, involving former Al Qaida members, has toppled the House of Saud, though not the gripe of the Wahabi clerics, and the nation has been renamed Islamyah. Islamyah is under economic embargo by the United States and oil is up to $85 a barrel.
Against this backdrop, a political intrigue pitting the U.S. intelligence services against the Defense Department unfolds. The DOD and its Secretary wish to see every threat in the Middle East through the lens of their hatred for the new Islamyah government and their self-interested desire to place the Saudi royals back on the throne. The intelligence services want to know what’s really going on and Clarke’s story follows the international adventures of a few protagonists from the Western intelligence services in the quest to find the truth before it’s too late.
Article comments
1 - Ken Clark
I have been reading Clarke's "The Scorpion's Gate"
and had to quit when, on p.21 Clarke mistakenly
reversed the longitude and latitude readings of
a suspected Chinese missile base in the desert of
the former Saudi Arabia. I figured that he screwed
on something simple like this so what else has he
gotten wrong? If he's such a hot-shot anti terro-
ism expert and so well educated why didn't he
proofread his own book?
2 - Brian
I wonder if he messed up the Lat and and Long to not specifically identify a place. It's fiction ya know!
3 - bob wright
Amazing there is no political warning on this book. I stopped at page 112 after reading too much of clark's political posturing and cheap shots, and I was bored with the book. Compared to the great fiction writers of this type of book the effort is very weak. And compared to the great Americans he is not one. That's ok, just don't sell this as a fiction novel without a warning.