Arab Summer (Sasha Del Mira Series, #3)

If you go to the trouble of imagining a near-future in which Ron Paul was elected president but died in office and was replaced by Vice President Rick Santorum, you should provide some of the backstory to explain what led to the shift in the national electorate. Lender doesn't do so in this third outing for retired CIA agent Sasha Del Mira (after the e-story "Sasha Returns"), making the pairing of radical right politicians in the highest office in the land a curious distraction rather than a significant detail. That's not all that doesn't work in this thriller centered on the threat that populist uprisings in the Arab world will spread to Saudi Arabia, with the new rulers either taking over or annexing a nuclear Iran (which for some unspecified reason submits to the non-nuclear new Saudi regime). The book opens with the fatal shooting of Sasha Del Mira's husband in Geneva before her eyes. Then it leaps forward 18 months as Del Mira teams with CIA Mid-East Section Head Tom Goddard to get revenge and to help the U.S. thwart the Saudi insurrection. Nothing in this installment makes much of an impression, though Ben Bernanke fans will be pleased that even after 2016 he's still running the Federal Reserve. (Jan.)