vacation book report: The Last Jihad

i started reading Joel Rosenberg's blog for his middle east updates. i grabbed his two novels at the public library for some light vacation reading. his first is The Last Jihad. the concept is dated. it was released right before the 2nd invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein the bad guy who tries to launch a nuclear missile at Israel, too bad reality showed he didn't have one. the story ends with a couple mushroom clouds. the convolutions of conspiracy of this novel were pretty good. the action was page turning. the writing was somewhat amateur; "locked and loaded" was used to excess. once is bad enough, several times is painful. the Gospel wasn't blatant, but acknowledged. this Christian author used minimal expletives, hell and the condemnation to it. there was no romance, but violence aplenty. the conspiracy was good enough to keep me from figuring it out yet all the clues were there so i didn't feel robbed at the revelations. it was a fine read in a New England April Nor'easter that brought a foot of snow to the mountains of Vermont.