“Robert Cook is a hell of a writer!”

—Michael Proctor, CEO PROCTOR GROUP LTD

Book 4 In The Cooch Thriller Series

The Mahdi

The Mahdi is a techno-national security thriller. It presents Islam to the West from the perspective of the liberal Muslim and the liberal Jew, seen through the lens of a Bedouin-American badass. It is about Israel and the Middle East and is a tale of the liberal Jewish community and world legal opinion in a struggle against Israel’s Orthodox right wing. The role of Artificial Intelligence in warfare and education is fundamental to the story. Fiction brings a quantum computer in a cell phone and a chatbot named Emilie who vastly outshines the ChatGPT of today.

The Mahdi was completed in June of 2023, so the recent Gaza combat give it color and immediacy, with a solution more realistic than we are seeing today in Gaza.

Meet 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.

Michael Proctor

Book 3 in The Cooch Thriller Series

Pulse

What about Iran??

Pulse describes the complex process of preventing Iran from deploying nuclear weapons that are likely to destroy Israel, destabilize the Middle East and threaten world peace.

Pulse opens in Morocco, passes to Washington at the White House and then Camp David, passes again through Morocco and ends in Tehran. The interwoven back story is about how to bring the transformational lessons of the Enlightenment to the Middle East, with inexpensive, technology-enabled, mass education as the catalyst.

Pulse is a thriller for the thoughtful reader. The lessons and arguments for and against the morality of war in a societal context are from some of history’s great minds.

The protagonist, Alejandro (Alex) Muhammad Cuchulain (Cooch), is a former US Marine who served on the CIA Special Operations team for eight years. He is a purveyor of violence and of Islamic philosophy gained from studies at the College of Oriental Studies at Oxford. He is also a successful Middle Eastern businessman. Cooch is the leader of a team of five. Cooch’s best friend is preppie, former Navy Seal and Rhodes Scholar, Brooks F. T. Elliot IV, a student of the Enlightenment. Dr. Caitlin O’Connor, is a CalTech trained computational physicist with an enormous ego and larger intellect who has developed a software product that crunches huge amounts of Big Data to infer conclusions from it, to the delight of both the National Security Agency and every-day students across societies. Jerome Masterson is Alex’s long time CIA Special Ops partner; he is a student of institutional violence and it s application. Mac MacMillan is on the staff of the White House National Security Advisor and is an enabler. They ebb and flow around Cooch.

Iran plans to deploy soon a nuclear weapon to deliver Zionist-occupied Palestine back to its historic owners and enslave current residents. Israel abhors that idea, and plans to attack Iran without US permission.

The President seeks desperately to find a way to contain nuclear proliferation without again putting US troops in ground combat in the Middle East. His chief of staff and the Secretary of State are skeptical of proposals, and articulate in their opposition.

The US decides to instigate a civil war in Iran with few US boots on the ground. The full military hegemonic might of the US will be employed to support the chosen side of the Iranian conflict.

Cooch travels to Iran to facilitate identifying and convincing a group of Iranians to lead the insurrection against Iran’s radical Shiite leadership. His reputation as the leading Islamic scholar on the violent Sunni/Shiite schism allows him entry into Tehran.

The US attack on Iran opens with a display of military might and prowess designed to free the Straits of Hormuz for the flow of the world’s oil. Iran’s Russian-backed navy and its huge fleet of small, armed boats and minelayers threaten both the US fleet and the world’s oil supply. New weapons cause US casualties and threaten the offensive.

Farther north, Iran’s uranium enrichment sites at Fordo and Natanz are destroyed. In the first few minutes of the US attack, Iran’s telecommunications infrastructure is destroyed with a new electromagnetic pulse weapon that fries silicon and copper wires and thus brings the internet and every electric-powered device in range to a halt, destroyed forever. The radical Shiite leadership in the holy city of Qom is incinerated with their internet, television and radio center.

Book 2 in The Cooch Thriller Series

Patriot & Assassin

An Alejandro “Cooch” Cuchulain Novel

Blend a dollop of Enlightenment history and philosophy for the lawyers and history buffs, a skosh of cool technology for the geekish, and a smidgen of business for the Wall Street crowd. Add to a boiling cauldron of passion and violence. Sprinkle with strong dialog and wit. Stir vigorously. Shazaam! Tomorrow’s headlines today, in Patriot and Assassin.

Patriot and Assassin places the protagonist, Alejandro ‘Cooch’ Cuchulain, at the heart of a plot to release nerve gas in one of our nation’s busiest stadiums, then later into the sadistic hands of the terrorist who planned that attack.

Cooch leads a Rhodes Scholar former Seal, a stunning MacArthur-winning physicist, a former USMC Master Sniper and the former director of the CIA’s special operations unit, now working in the White House. Together, they engage a large contingent of Al-Qaeda, among others, while working to improve the life of Muslims.

Inspired by Arab Spring evidence that Middle Eastern culture will be transformed positively when Muslims are convinced that transformation is in their self-interest, Patriot and Assassin uses proven lessons of the Enlightenment to expedite that transformation. More than simply sex and violence advance the story. Patriot and Assassin incorporates strong character development and powerful, thoughtful dialogue to drive this politico-thriller at a breakneck pace.

The team neither disdains violence on this journey to improve, nor avoids using the latest technology to make both the journey and the violence easier. Action flows seamlessly from Texas to Washington to Morocco to Yemen and back.
Former CIA warrior Cuchulain is a strong male protagonist working with a dynamic female protagonist in Dr. Caitlin O’Connor. This thriller brings a fresh dynamic to the genre. Patriot and Assassin positions itself as the thriller for thoughtful readers interested in observing strong, complex characters meeting complex worldwide challenges.