Ulterior Motives » (Large Print)

Mark Andrew Olsen, acclaimed author of the supernatural thrillers The Warriors and The Watchers, also collaborated on bestsellers Hadassah, The Hadassah Covenant, The Road Home, and Rescued. Mark grew up in France, the son of missionaries, and is a Professional Writing graduate of Baylor University. He and his wife, Connie, live in Colorado Springs with their three children.

When an al-Qaida email is intercepted, promising a New Year's Day attack on America, it leads to the capture of the group's leader. But even under fierce interrogation, the terrorist clings to his jihadist beliefs and resists divulging anything of the threat. Desperate, the Army resorts to a contingency paper that proposes to break a subject's resistance by inducing a religious conversion. One hitch: the top-secret attempt must be masked as an offer of clemency, and must rely on a completely innocent mentor, a so-called witness who is unaware of the project's true aims. They find that witness in Greg Cahill, a disgraced FBI agent who has since turned to Christ and serves in a prison ministry. Lured by an offer of restoration, as well as the lifting of a restraining order that's keeping him from seeing his son, Greg begins an unlikely friendship with a man the entire country despises. Despite himself, he begins to share his faith--yet with a combustible result unforeseen by either himself or his government handlers.

Publishers Weekly

Best known for his novel Hadassah (which was made into the film One Night with the King), Olsen packs everything Christian thriller fans enjoy in his newest. Greg Cahill is an ousted FBI agent called back for a dangerous mission for the U.S. government: thwarting a terrorist plot. Christian readers will find the interplay of faith and counter-terrorism interesting as Cahill shares his faith with a radical Muslim terrorist. But dialogue is clunky ("...since you people are so stinking familiar with all of my past pronouncements, then draw up an interrogation plan that's as aggressive as possible..."), and the author stumbles over finding believable ways to depict real characters while still writing for Christian readers. A month-long countdown to a terrorist attack builds suspense, but action is often summarized in a few sentences rather than used to build scenes. The climax includes a shocking decision of faith and sacrifice, but it comes five pages before an abrupt ending that doesn't exercise the heart muscle as much as thriller fans expect.
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