Monday Night Jihad

Combine Air Force Special Ops, professional football, and a series of terrorist attacks launched by a deep undercover Muslim fanatic, and you have the red-blooded American tale of Monday Night Jihad. The terrorist attacks are launched against the Mall of America in Minneapolis and against a large stadium where a Monday night professional football game is about to be played. The counterattacks by the Special Ops teams take place in Europe. The denouement occurs in SoCal on the day of the Super Bowl. You can't get much better than that. The prose is about 8th grade level and quite smooth. There are no gratuitous sex scenes, and the main character is a born-again practicing Christian. The violence is gripping but not excessively graphic. This book is therefore a recommended read for mid-high and high school age males. Jason Elam is the veteran kick specialist of the Denver Broncos. His co-author, Steve Yohn, has a real gift for light action prose. You can read this book easily in one evening. Enjoy!

I doubt that I would have ever found this book if I had not been told about it by a friend with whom I share an interest in various kinds of novels. She had not read it, but she lives in Denver and the principal author of the book is Jason Elam, a member of the NFL Denver Broncos and their place kicker. She saw a review of the book in a local paper and mentioned that I might want to take a look at it. I did and I am very glad that I did so. It is a first rate novel on terrorisim that tells a gripping storty and that offers insight into that war that we are all involved in. The principal figure in the book is Riley Covington. A former member of the USAF Special Operations Command seeing duty in Afghanastan and a graduate of the Air Force Academy, Covington has, after his tour of duty been drafted by the Denver Mustangs and made the team as a linebacker. Hakim Quasin is the antagonist of the story who, as a child, has seen his family bombed to dust in Operation Desert Storm and has sworn vengence on the United States. He is taken under the wing of a man known as "The Scorpion" who sees to it that the 12 year old Quasin is sent to Europe where the moulding process begins. The planning begins to come to fruition as terrorists enter the United States with a plan to bring the war again to our shores. They are part of an organization known as The Cause. Some former members of Covington's military unit are involved in trying to track them down and are closing in on some of them as they launch an attack at the Mall of America. Evidence obtained as a result of this action leads them to the belief that more is coming. But what? Meanwhile, the Mustangs are preparing for an important league game on Monday Night Football. Unknown to anyone, so is The Cause. The attack is lauched during the game with much loss of life in a horrifying manner. Covington is uninjured, but was very much in the middle of what transpired. As he contemplates what he witnessed "the question that dominated his mind was what could he do about what happened tonight? He hadn't asked to be drawn into this fight. In fact, he had left the Air Force Special Operations Command so that he wouldn't have to fight anymore. His days of ringing ears and dodging projectiles were supposed to be over." "But now they had brought the fight back to him. They attacked his people. They had killed his friend." These thoughts are the genisis of his return to special ops and the tracking down of the people responsible. The story spins out in a believable and compelling fashion and is very difficult to put down. An interesting sidelight to this book is that Elam and his co-author are committed Christians. Their views on religion are shared in this work without being preachy or over bearing. They also have managed to write a book about some very tough people doing a very good job without using any profanity whatsoever. I was about a quarter of the way into the book before it dawned on me that I did not

Hariet, Jason Elam IS NOT a former NFL kicker and still plays a vital part in the Denver Broncos system. He is a Christian, public speaker, and a very humble guy. Steve Yohn is the Director of Adult Ministries at Fellowship Community Church near Denver. You ARE CORRECT when you state they "have written an exciting fast paced thriller that goes inside the mind of the terrorist to learn why they perform such horrific acts". This is a great book! Everyone should take the time to read this book to get inside the head of an Islamic fanatic and understand how he feels about the differences between the world of Islam and Christianity. You also go along for a ride that's a thrill a minute. Very well written. Go buy it! Way to go Jason from a fan from St James Presbyterian.

I really enjoyed this book--a great read. The football action is realistic and provides a behind-the-scenes look, plus the perspective on the terrorist's viewpoint is well crafted and believable. Kudos to the authors. Can't wait to see the next installment.

I picked up this book, hoping for a good read but dubious at the same time. Football and terrorism? And a new untried author to boot. Well, I was pleasantly surprised. The writing is decent. The action keeps you turning the pages, and there is actually a plot. The protagonist is a Christian, which gives a certain dimension to the character and the outworking of the plot, and the author is careful to keep his "bad guys" human; i.e., complex. You can actually feel sympathy for the Muslim terrorist, while at the same time seeing how what he believes is destructive. I am going to have my teen sons read this -- it will be a painless way for them to learn about Islam (in both the "terrorist" and a "moderate") -- and on top of all that, there is no bad language or questionable scenes that I would have to remove. Three cheers for "clean" authors who can really write!!!