Abuse of Power

Michael Savage, the irreverent conservative talk show host, has written a thriller that will appeal to his listeners and a much wider audience. It has all the hallmarks of an exciting and suspenseful novel that will top Amazon and other best seller lists.

Abuse of Power is written in a simple and

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direct style. The reader will hear Savage’s voice through his autobiographical main character, Jack Hatfield, and will also detect direct comments from the author without the filter of the character. The direct talk is usually annoying in a novel, but with Savage it is expected and pleases or irritates depending on the reader’s political point of view.

The pace is very fast with speed breaks for Savage to give colorful views of the San Francisco Bay Area. During the action, the reader visits Fisherman’s Wharf, the Legion of Honor, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, the Richmond San Rafael Bridge, islands in the Bay, the Cow Palace, and the harbor in Sausalito. Some of the most exciting action takes place in London, but the focus of the story is terrorism in the “City by the Bay.”

A surprise for the reader is the sexual content of the novel. Savage is graphic but not in a clinical way that you might expect from a University of California, Berkeley Ph.D. in Nutritional Ethnomedicine. The sexual scenes are not gratuitous but rather add titillation to the tale of terrorism. The sex scenes keep the reader’s tension going from one violent action episode to the next.

Compared to his radio show, Michael pulls his punches a bit in the novel. There are balanced presentations of his favorite topics on the show, “borders, language, and culture.” For example, he is careful to point out that “militant” Muslims are the perpetrators of violence against humanity, and a vast majority of followers of the religion do not want to take over the world and kill infidels.

Many of the characters in the novel who emerge as leaders of good or evil are older males like Savage himself. The seasoned citizen male reader will identify with Jack and some of the other characters because of the favorable treatment of their intellect and physical prowess compared to younger characters. Also, the older Jack hooks up with a beautiful younger Muslim woman.

This is an entertaining thriller with hopeful themes counterbalancing the vicious, hateful stereotypical characters that are important to the story but small in numbers. It is also a pleasure to read positive accounts about the San Francisco Bay Area, my original home town. I give Abuse of Power my highest rating in the thriller genre.

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