When the death threats started coming — months before “The Last Patriot” was published July 1 — author Brad Thor found himself between the proverbial rock and hard place.
As an author, he felt strongly that “The Last Patriot,” a fictional thriller that claims Mohammed’s final revelation was not included in the Koran, should be published.
But, as even he concedes, hearing that some people believed his work was blasphemous — and therefore he should be killed — was a little alarming.
That left Thor, known for his best-selling novels such as “The Lions of Lucerne” and “The First Commandment,” embarking on a security plan worthy of Scot Harvarth, his fictional man of action. He and his family hired a security team. They moved. And they have engaged in “several other measures I don’t want to talk about,” he says.
And now, Thor is doing his best to get on with his life, which, just at the moment, includes a book tour.
“You know, my publicist said maybe we should put the death threats on the back of the book as blurbs,” Thor says, sounding almost wistful that they haven’t done it.
A cross between “The Da Vinci Code” and “National Treasure,” peppered with up-to- the-minute references and crammed full of enough shoot-’em-up sequences (and weaponry) to make an action addict drool, “The Last Patriot” puts itself squarely in the political thriller tradition of Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum.
The novel finds Harvarth, an ex-CIA man with what Thor calls “an agenda bigger than himself,” smack in the middle of international intrigue when documents come to light suggesting that the prophet Mohammed uttered a revelation before being assassinated by one of his followers in the year 632.
That final revelation — which could defeat militant Islam — has been suppressed for centuries. But Harvarth and his fellow adventurers are on a mission to follow historical clues (and elude the bad guys) to find evidence of the (fictional) truth.
With its theory that the Koran is incomplete, and therefore imperfect, Thor says, the novel may offend some of the Muslim faith.
He consciously put “very positive Muslim characters in the book,” he says, but fears that “that won’t make a difference to radicals who want to make a big deal of it.”
Still, he says, “My intent is not to inflame Muslims but to entertain readers of great thrillers. At the end of the day, I want people to see a good protagonist struggle against serious odds and do so with courage and honor and integrity.”
Like most writers, Thor has projected his own personality into his main character. “He is my alter ego,” Thor says with a laugh.
“He reflects a lot of how I view my country and what I think is good about America and what is terrifying about the war on terror.”
To research both of the those views, Thor recently toured Afghanistan with a group of people who . . . well, he can’t exactly say who they were.
“Technically, these people don’t exist, but they’re big fans of my books,” he says. “It was dangerous, very dangerous, but very exciting at the same time.”
Thor, who hosted “Traveling Lite” on PBS before beginning his career as an author, has also served as a member of the Analytic Red Cell Program for Homeland Security.
“It’s incredibly rewarding to be invited into a government program to be of service to my country,” he says.
That said, he’s not talking about what exactly he has done for them.
“I say that it’s the Las Vegas of government programs, in that what happens in the Red Cell Program, stays in the Red Cell Program.”
Fiction
The Last Patriot, by Brad Thor, $26
