The Bathsheba Deadline: An Original Novel

I first noticed Jack in his Arutz Sheva work. His character "Ben"in "The Days of The Bitter End stirred something in me as I had my first apartment in 1967 on 6th street near Ave B. in the East Village. And his take on our martyred Lenny, of course. Btw, while not agreeing with another reviewer that Jack's writing is the best in the world, I will say that the paragraph written on p. 31 of Bitter End was some of the best writing I've seen (see below*). Why is Jack an inspiration in Bathsheva? Cause Jay Goldberg is. And the Doorman was in Bitter End was too. Having gotten a taste of the backstretch with my dad's interest in cheap claimers when I was still in short pants, I found cutting afternoon classes to take a car to Aqueduct a normal experience (Cah'ta Noo Yawk, heah!!!). I - like Jay - pined away many of my teenage moments wishing I had the stones to chuck school and run away with a backstretch crew, leaving the bourgeois Brooklyn middle class to work the racetrack circuit - as a walker then groom-and ultimately aspiring to train. However, I grew up world-class-warped and did take the psychotic opportunity to bet $10,000 as a pari-mutual clerk with $5 in his pocket.[...] What has that got to do with Jack's "Beersheva" book? Plenty. I eventually collected what was left of me (post AA, NA, GA) into a new self, and a different incarnation made "Aliyah" to a settlement in Binyamin called "Anatot/Almon" (in the so-called West Bank)1991-94. Strange that people call it "occupied territory," when my ancestor Benjamin settled it 2000 years before Mohammed was born. Anyway, there's a poem that goes "I'd rather be a taxi driver in Jerusalem than a king in New Jersey." I lasted four wonderful but terribly difficult years there, paid for it with my marriage ripped apart, and returned to the USA to watch my beautiful and dear Israel raped and pillaged and beaten by the entire world plus her own, the stench of Gush Katif causing tears in heavenly realms. So when I see the stoic - am I in danger of being labeled a fehgala if I add masculine? - qualities in these characters, it does help reorganize dispassionate observation which is vital in our day and age. Probably what REALLY endeared and INSPIRED me what when his character says - i have to paraphrase this cause I loaned the book to my son - "the purity, or pure joy of writing is done alone by the writer without censor," or something along those lines, and it really touched me. We will all need this dispassionate character to stand upright as the Muslim raiders come pouring out of ACORN and the newly emerging Gestapo-Brown Shirts "Americorp;" courtesy of the great ObamaNation and the EVER-NOW-SILENT STREISANDS, SPIELBERGS AND WOODY ALLENS. * p. 31 Jack Engelhard "The Days of the Bitter End" "He was overcome by the oddest sort of nostalgia, a form of deja vu, that had him thinking he had done all this before. He had been here before, in his mind's eye, and was looking back at it from a distance o

I thought reporters all wore fedoras as they sat smoking Old Golds at their Underwoods. Jack Engelhard, who knows the newspaper game inside and out gives us a fascinating peek into a modern newsroom. At the same time....reading this book I could almost skip reading the morning paper. The story line reads like the headlines of today. Really good...really entertaining.

THE BOOK obama AND THE NEW YORK TIMES IS DETERMINED DOESN'T EXIST Paraphrasing one of Western culture's more infamous 19th Century authors There is a Spirit abroad in the land...neither president nor prime minister...neither pope nor parliament can exorcise it... In its face, the great civilizations of the Western World cower, for they can prevail not against it... ...like the California education official that forces Christian and Jewish children to take Moslem names and bow down on prayer rugs... ...like the UK Minister of Education who sees to it that British children in muslim areas do not know of the Holocaust...because it offends people who were Hitler's former allies.... Yea we have become like the ungodly in the Bible we are forbidden to read in our schools...we are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Spirit thy name is Jihad....and all the kings and princes, presidents and prime ministers bow down before thee.... Or so it seems as Madness fastens its hold on the only people strong enough to send this Spirit to Hell wrapped in pig skin.... Confusion reigns as the election that needed to bring to the forefront our greatest leaders instead presented Talking Heads.... For they command no respect though one is surrounded by followers imbued with hate... The guy who won is a jihadist...find out in this book what that means for you.... Jack Engelhard saw this coming over two years ago. He wrote a book, BATHSHEBA DEADLINE, a book the New York Times will not review...a book they will not allow to be mentioned on their pages when its precepts are quoted to alert our people to what is really happening...to what the Spirit Jihad is slowly but steadily putting into place... The Final Holocaust.... Jack Engelhard remembers... he survived the last one. He will NOT bow down to the Spirit Jihad.... He has told us the bitter Truth on the pages of BATHSHEBA DEADLINE: THE KORAN HAS ARRIVED IN AMERICA...IT HAS COME TO DEVOUR THE BIBLE If widely read this book would cause the scales to fall from our eyes... It could become the focal point of an alerted America...an alerted Israel. It could galvanize the thinking and fighting spirit of patriotic old style liberals and patriotic old style conservatives...Christians and Jews everywhere.... The targets of the Final Holocaust.... BATHSHEBA DEADLINE must be widely distributed....at least as widely as the New York Times sees happen to the pablum written by media darlings hailed as the best author of all times [there's a new politically correct automaton every month hailed as the best author of all times]. BATHSHEBA DEADLINE, meanwhile gathers dust. The Times has decreed it does not exist.... And still the clock ticks on..... Anonymous----for fear of deletion

It isn't often that a novel manages to encapsulate both the current and the classic---to exist in the present alongside echoes of the past. Jack Engelhard's The Bathsheba Deadline is a notable member of this rare species. On one hand, a scintillating love triangle based on the biblical story of King David, Uriah and the beautiful and desirable Bathsheba, The Bathsheba Deadline is also a clever and wonderfully perceptive look at contemporary journalism and the post-9/11 political backdrop. Indeed, political junkies looking for fiction straight out of the headlines need look no further. Engelhard captures a country, and a world, caught up in conflict and haunted by the specter of the unknown. It is a time in which the modern and the ancient all too often collide. Engelhard also captures the crucial role of journalism amongst it all. The setting for the novel is a fictional daily newspaper called The Manhattan Independent and the lead characters are its managing editor, book editor, and a reporter. As they grapple with news cycles, deadlines, internal power plays, and shifting ethics, it's clear that Engelhard, who has years of newspaper experience under his belt, knows of what he speaks. Nonetheless, the new media looms large and Engelhard is clearly taking the pulse of the future. He gives credit to the growing influence of online journalism and the blogosphere, or, what he accurately labels in the novel, "Bypass Journalism." Online journalism is, in fact, starting to supercede the mainstream media and Engelhard knows it. Given that he himself is an accomplished online columnist, his observations are right on the money. So too is the way in which he weaves fictional characters with real life figures from the world of online journalism. Being a member of the latter group, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself a recurring character, of sorts, in The Bathsheba Deadline. Various fellow travelers in the new media also make appearances in the novel's pages. But the book has much more to offer than journalism or politics. Filled with romance, sex, witty banter, philosophical reminiscences, heart stopping thrills, a no-nonsense (and, I might add, sexy) lead man and an ever-alluring femme fatale, The Bathsheba Deadline is an entertaining ride. It's the kind of novel I found myself nodding in knowing agreement and smiling or sighing in shared sentiment throughout. Beyond the great characters, the elegant writing, and the charming slices of life, it touched on so many issues that I found personally and politically relevant that I couldn't help but be drawn in. And I have no doubt others will do the same. **This review appears as the book's Foreword.

Critic Letha Hadady called this book "A towering literary achievement." I expected to read something special. And was I DELIGHTED to find it! Jack Engelhard's Bathsheba Deadline reads like a classic, but it contains current news, personalities, and even popular Internet columnists that keep things hopping. The main players are Jay Garfield, chief editor of The Manhattan Independent, the unlikely hero, a newspaper man of the old school. Lyla is his lover. She is brainy, busty--a dame who is a book critic. Her husband, Phil, is a born-again converted to Islam. They make an eternal triangle that involves us all in a web of suspense and current day headlines. Reading Bathsheba Deadline is like enjoying a good cigar and brandy with your feet on the desk after a long day. You become part of a satisfying film noire. But who are the John Garfield and Lana Turner who can play these exciting movie roles today? You have to read the book: Their love, hate, guilt and retribution keep you glued until the very end. The Bathsheba Deadline cuts through the layer cake of what it is to be human - from angel to animal. We are left breathless. Bravo for a sterling work.