From IPPY gold medal winner Robert Cook comes the fourth installment in the Cooch series. With all the classic elements of a spy thriller—intrigue, violence, sex—The Mahdi is a narrative geopolitical battlefield where Islamic and Jewish ideologies clash, seen through the lens of a modern, liberal Muslim. Raised in a blend of Bedouin tradition and Western education, Alex Cuchulain (Cooch) is a former US Marine, CIA operator, and entrepreneur. Partnered with Dr. Caitlin O’Connor, the self-described “smartest person in the world,” they make an unlikely yet formidable duo.

When Alex takes on a mission to reclaim stolen Bedouin land, he finds himself imprisoned and branded a criminal. Meanwhile, Caitlin faces her own dangers, becoming the target of an extremist plot. But the rules of warfare change forever when Caitlin condenses an electromagnetic pulse into shootable ammunition and deploys an AI chatbot–quantum computer that can use the internet to control secure Israeli communications and provide strategic intel.

As tensions escalate, some begin to believe that Alex may actually be the Mahdi, the prophesied redeemer of Islam. But can he shoulder that mantle? And can technology and enlightened thinking prevail over entrenched dogma?

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The Characters

Alex Cuchulain

Our protagonist served eight years in the US Marines and as a CIA special operator—a badass. He later completed a degree in electrical engineering at Carnegie Mellon and a Master’s in Islamic Studies from Oxford. He was a successful venture capitalist in New York. His grandfather was a successful Bedouin trader and left that business to Alex, who lived in Tangier with Caitlin O’Connor. He was known there as Kufdani.

Caitlin O’Connor

Our female protagonist and Cuchulain’s lover was a particle physicist, said to be the smartest woman in the world. Her main job was as a contractor for the US National Security Agency (NSA). She developed the Kphone, a quantum computer in a cell phone, that was used widely by the protagonist group. With the quantum Kphone, she developed a heuristic AI Chatbot to manage the information collected. Caitlin also developed a shootable, fusible Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) weapon that would turn out lights and destroy electrical circuitry over whatever distance she chose.

The Author

The foundation idea for The Mahdi arose while I was reading the Economist magazine several years ago and read of the conflict in Israel over Bedouin ownership rights in Israel. Since I had been writing about Cooch as half-Bedouin for quite a while, I decided to pursue research to see if there was a book in there for me. There was, it was a great fit, and remains that way today. Netanyahu is still pursuing the right-wing agenda, confiscating Arab land and destroying the rule of law in Israel. The Israeli intelligentsia is going crazy, protesting in the streets, pretty much as I predicted. I heard one Israeli citizen say, “I don’t want to live in a repressive, failing, Middle Eastern Jewish theocracy. I like Israel the way it is.” Now we have the Hamas conflict with no good solution in sight, except, of course, perhaps the one I present with this fiction.

A thriller that dares to suggest that peace is possible
in the middle east.
— Karen K.

A terrific thriller in a horrific setting
—P.J. Brooks


"Today the Israelis came to punish us,

the Muslims who live in Palestine and

the Muslims who serve Allah without

a country, we Bedouins"

The Mahdi

By Robert E. Cook

The Series

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