False Flag

John Altman. Blackstone, $26.99 (364p) ISBN 978-1-5047-9772-6

Altman (Disposable Asset) doesn’t offer anything new in this paint-by-numbers political thriller. The Mossad head (aka the ramsad), who’s worried that the American administration has become less supportive of Israel, believes that a “tragedy on U.S. soil was worth a million equivalent tragedies in Israel.” This leads him to conclude that his country’s security depends on its successful execution of a false flag operation—the release of a biological weapon in a high-value location—that will be blamed on Iran. Conveniently for his plans, there’s an easily identifiable delivery mechanism: Michael Fletcher, an American Jew who lost most of his left leg in Iraq and now works as an official photographer for the House of Representatives. The ramsad’s evil plan is detected by other members of Israeli intelligence, who work feverishly to foil it, aided by Dalia Artzi, an Israeli visiting professor of military history at Princeton. Readers should be prepared for some awkward prose (“Panic tried to take Jana in its teeth, and she forbade it”). Agent: Richard Curtis, Richard Curtis Agency. (May)