The Follow Up To Cooch
I’ve been told that there were enough subplots in Cooch for six books, rather than one. I’m consolidating those a bit with the second book. I originally named the second book A Patriot and an Assassin, but then the current hot thriller writer, Vince Flynn, came out last month with American Assassin, so I may have to change the title. That new thriller was interesting to me, since Flynn chose to talk about the development from youth of his protagonist, Mitch Rapp. I did that, up front, in Cooch, at the price of a slow start I suppose.
The story line in book two is that Cooch has inherited his grandfather’s large commerce business based in Tangier, Morocco, which covers the Middle East and southern Europe and has several thousand employees. He and his Rhodes scholar buddy, Elliot, decide the apply a few of the lessons of the Enlightenment to the current situation in the Middle East, mostly rule of law and the social contract stuff, by offering child care, education and basic medical services within the envelope of the company employees. They get the support of the US by building the mother of all intelligence networks – ground up, eager to enable and consolidate gossip from the masses. Or at least the Sunni masses — the Shi’a won’t make out as well. Cooch and company kill (execute/murder) Arabs who get in the way of their plans, often with US help and US deniability. There is some Tab A and C discussion.
A story line that hasn’t been used is the one that looks at the influence of the Enlightenment on Western Society and attempts to use those lessons to begin to remake the Arab world. That’s what Cooch and his bunch are trying to do. It’s fun to try to describe that goal and to discuss how to get there. The Enlightenment was an intellectual force that overcame many of the constraints of organized, politicized religion (that’s probably redundant). It took a while. So far, I mostly discuss the social contract and the rule of law – Sharia law in this case. I focus on Rousseau, Adam Smith and Ben Franklin.
Stay tuned…
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