Review: The New Holy Warriors by Alice Sandoval

An international thriller based around the events of September 11, 2001, The New Holy Warriors combines a rich mix of fact and fiction.

Just two days after the horrific happenings of 9-11, a California-based Mexican-American lawyer, Marc Bravo, gets word that his physician father and nurse mother have been missing for three days in Mexico, where they were working as volunteers for Doctors Without Borders.

Shaken by the attack on the US, Bravo is doubly unnerved when he hears this news and quickly enlists the assistance of his younger brother Richard, an archeology student, and an old friend, Paul Levy who, like Bravo, received military training in the National Guard. In Mexico City Bravo draws together a tough-minded multi-skilled team and begins to investigate the whereabouts of his parents based on the eyewitness account of a young boy who saw them taken away in a black van. The Mexican Mafia is suspected.

The elder Bravos have been abducted, not by the Mexican Mafiosi, but by Islamic terrorists who need medical help for one of their members. As their two sons and Bravo’s team stalk their trail through jungles among ancient mystical monuments, the older couple are attempting an escape. On yet another front, a beautiful woman with whom Marc had fallen in love, but who mysteriously disappeared from his life without a trace, is revealed as a CIA operative who is also abducted and imprisoned only a few miles from where he stalks the villains who menaced his parents.

Author and journalist Sandoval constructs a highly complex plot connecting the Yucatan, Washington, Southern California, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East in skeins of true events and imagined scenarios, all highly dramatic. She has clearly done copious research on the life of the prophet Mohammed, and details various strains of Islam including Wahhabism, a fundamentalist movement that came to dominance in Saudi Arabia.

Long portions of Sandoval’s novel are taken up with historical data from various sources, along with both real and fictional details contemporaneous to the story. While this makes for an informative read, it can give the otherwise well-crafted tale an unbalanced feeling at times. And since some information has been invented solely to advance the plot, readers may justifiably feel the need to fact check. The cover is reflective of this uneven quality, as it appears on first glance to be a work of non-fiction, which it assuredly is not, even with the factual detail.

Readers should be aware going in to The New Holy Warriors that there is a strong, undeniable anti-Islam bias, which Sandoval makes no attempt to conceal, threaded through the book, centering on what the author believes is a war that began on 9-11 against all Americans by Muslims bent on restoring an international caliphate at any cost. The novel is conservative in its outlook, so it will be best enjoyed by those of a similar perspective, while some readers may see her perspective as too black and white.

Despite veering into heady areas of non-fiction, Sandoval’s works well as an action-packed mystery set in exotic locales and featuring many surprising, well-crafted twists and turns, so it will appeal to those who enjoy international thrillers – and who agree with the novel’s central premise.