The Foreign Service Journal, November 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2021 61 of rebels, who were also scholars and intellectuals, poets and patrons of the arts, known for outstanding contributions to medieval jurisprudence. This is the first volume in the Rebels of Outremer series. The Emperor Strikes Back: Frederick II’s War against His Vassals Helena P. Schrader, Cross Seas Press, 2020, $20.95/paperback, e-book available, 433 pages. The Emperor Strikes Back picks up where Rebels Against Tyranny leaves off. It continues the story of the “old” Lord of Beirut and his five sons: Novare’s “compeer” Balian (named after Balian d’Ibelin) and his brothers, the “wolflings,” as well as the story of Lady Eschiva de Montbèliard and Bella d’Ibelin. It also continues the stories of a large supporting cast of fictional characters, such as the Genoese widow Cecilia, the Templar priest Ernesius and the Ethiopian stable master Eskinder. This is the second volume in the Rebels of Outremer series. Messianic Reveal: A Clayton Haley Novel Ethan T. Burroughs, Morgan James Fiction, 2020, $16.95/paperback, e-book available, 280 pages. This debut novel, a work of historical fiction that reads like a thriller, offers readers an understanding of Middle Eastern developments beyond the sensational and often misleading daily news headlines. The protagonist, Foreign Service Officer Clayton Haley, is assigned for his first tour to Paris where he soon finds himself enmeshed in a web of conspiracies. In the prologue, the author sets as the backdrop to his story the rise of al-Qaida and other terrorist groups and movements. He describes events and actors in 1979 in Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and in 1980 and 1981 in Iraq and the United States, respectively. The action then ricochets back and forth between Paris, Amman, Minnesota, Baghdad, Jeddah and Mecca, among other locales. While we are taken behind the scenes of the government’s bureaucratic and policy machinations as the West attempts to grapple with militant Islam, we are also taken into the politics, ideologies and theologies of the Middle East, including discussions of Islam from both Sunni and Shia points of view. Messianic Reveal ends with a bang, but Clayton Haley’s journey is not over. Its sequel, Writ Reveal , will be coming soon. Ethan T. Burroughs is the pen name for a member of the Foreign Service, a U.S. Army veteran, teacher, consultant and aspiring storyteller, who has dedicated much of the last two decades to exploring the Middle East and slowly unraveling its mysteries. His work has taken him to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, where he has studied in detail the local history, faith, cuisine, language and culture. The Maple Conspiracy William Begley, Wheatmark, 2019, $23.95/paperback, e-book available, 442 pages. Canada in the mid-1930s may not sound like a prime setting for a novel combining espionage, aviation and international intrigue. But it works brilliantly in William Begley’s The Maple Conspiracy , in which Evan Macroy, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot and intelligence adviser to Prime Minister Mackenzie King, heads up a large cast of characters spanning the globe. As the novel opens in the winter of 1935, the PM dispatches squadron leader Macroy to an air show in Miami to purchase new fighter aircraft, part of an ongoing project to modernize the RCAF. But as an ascendant Germany begins to threaten Canada and the rest of the world, that mission quickly spirals into a desperate journey of survival and discovery that includes adventures in civil wars in China and Spain, a German- engineered plot against the ruling Liberal Party, a high- speed chase in Miami, encounters with the German military intelligence service, a Japanese airborne rescue of his kidnapped wife, and a trans-Atlantic pursuit by British submarines. William Begley is a Foreign Service spouse currently serving in Vienna alongside his wife, Public Affairs Officer Teta Moehs. Since 2005, the couple have lived in Seoul, Berlin, Beijing, Leipzig and Conakry. A former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer who received two national awards from the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Begley later worked in the U.S. Civil Service and in the commercial sector in China, Japan and Germany.