The Apostle by Brad Thor; 2009; 358 pages; Atria Books, New York, NY; 978-1-41658657-9 ;7/22/09-7/23/09

America has elected a new President who believes in playing by the rules even if his enemies don’t, that is until someone threatens him with a little secret that he doesn’t want known.  The Presidents’ biggest backers doctor daughter,  who is working in Afghanistan, has been kidnapped by Al-Qaeda.  They want to exchange her for a Taliban leader.  However there is someone shady behind the deal that wants to make it go bad and make the Americans look bad.  Scot Horvath is hired by the backer to rescue her daughter  and make the exchange.  However Scot doesn’t want to see the terrorist free so he decides on a different course of action and gets both the terrorist and the daughter.  There is what I considered an unnecessary subplot to get the President out of office, which combines the tragedies at Chappaquiddick and the Watergate cover up.

What makes these books different and easier to suspend disbelief than the Robert K. Tanenbaum book I review earlier is that here, in Gone Tomorrow and the next book I will review is that the hero in them is someone who has specialized training and knows how to use it, whereas Butch and Marlene have to rely on others and luck and almost too much cooperation.  Reacher is a former Army with special training, Scot Horvath is a former SEAL and Lt. Jack Daniels is a police officer.  RRRR