Love Thy Neighbor by Mark Gilleo

Title: Love Thy Neighbor
Author: Mark Gilleo
ISBN: 9781611880342
Publisher: The Story Plant/2012
Pages: 438

 Love Thy Neighbor deals with terrorism, which is a hard reality in the current times. No country is immune from it. It exists all over the world in one form of the other. And the neighbors we think are harmless might turn out out to be terrorists, in guise.

I live in India, our neighboring country is Pakistan. We have had too many terrorist attacks. And those are not going to stop anytime soon. The novel appealed to me as I could connect with it. Terrorist activities might go on right under our nose and we choose to ignore those. We turn a blind eye thinking it is not going to affect us.

Clay Hayden comes home to his mother Maria, who is suffering from Dementia. It is Maria who notices strange men in her neighborhood and calls CIA. No one listens to her initially. FBI follows and also a person from IRS who is looking out for tax discrepancies regarding Maria and her deceased husband. Clay finds himself in the midst of it all.

Not going into much detail, I would say, it scares us. It makes us ponder, if we can prevent terror activities by being vigilant. It does not seem that way here. Based on a true story, this work of fiction makes us question ourselves and our Govt. agencies. (For me it is the Indian Govt.)

Gods and Fathers by James LePore

 "Leave your guns," said jack. "Take theirs."
"Leave our guns?", Matt said.
"They are CB guns, Matt," said Clark. "Untraceable."
~~~Page 249

Title: Gods and Fathers
Author: James LePore
ISBN-13: 978-1611880298
Publisher: The Story Plant/2012
Pages: 261

I love novels with strong influence of espionage and intelligence. Terrorism is an international issue and LePore has dealt with it very well. In fact he does it rather well, in all his novels. 

Matt DeMarco is a lawyer and his estranged son Michael is charged with rape and murder of his Girl friend Yashmin. Debra, Matt's ex-wife is married to a rich Syrian, who seems to have links with Islamic terrorism. Matt has to save his son, who seems to have been set up. When the investigating officers are killed one by one, Matt knows he has to do something about it. This takes him into deep, murky world of revenge, terrorism and killings.

Given the prevailing situation in Syria and the Arab world, I found the novel engrossing. The characters are well developed. And grow on us. Evil is personified very well. I liked the underlying plot. I look forward to read more novels by James LePore...