What do you think?
Rate this book
EMMA: Emergent Movement of Militant Anarchists
Finalist in the 2013 Foreword Book Award Contest for best thriller/suspense. Winner of best terrorist thriller in the 2013 Readers' Favorite Annual International Award Contest.
EMMA: Emergent Movement of Militant Anarchists by Michael Segedy is every bit as exciting as you'd expect a novel by this talented author to be. A group of political anarchists -embracing a philosophy that holds the state to be unnecessary at best and harmful at worst - use the Web as a tool to achieve what they see as improvements in society. However, within the ranks are some extremists who will only be happy if corporate figures they see as evil are removed permanently. The key figure in the action is Brent Cossack, a CIA operative who is forced to resign after becoming disillusioned at discovering some grim truths about American foreign policy. Events conspire to keep him on the edge. Another somewhat disillusioned man, FBI agent Rick Clark, while trying to forget tough personal circumstances, becomes intimately involved in the action. He turns to a psychologist for support and help comes from another quarter too.
The book has everything a modern high-tech thriller needs: computers, terrorists groups, reference to recent actual figures and events, corporate baddies, fanatics driven too far, and troubled but competent, strong, moral investigators. There is breathless tension by the truckload and plenty of high emotion, but it also has pathos and genuinely moving moments. Segedy always creates complex, convincing characters with enough emotional baggage to make them interesting but not crippled. He plunges these individuals into thoroughly researched and imaginative yet disturbingly realistic and plausible scenarios to keep his readers glued to the pages. Even the chapter headings show the thought that this author puts into his work and help keep every word he uses charged with energy and interest. If you haven't already realized from this review, let me tell you that this book is frankly brilliant and you really should read it.
About the Novel -------------------------------------------------------
Imagine a couple young hacktivists, both former members of the internet freedom fighters group Anonymous, and one of them an ex-black ops officer, breaking away and creating a militant group of anarchists committed to social change. But social change precipitated by acts of violence against CEOs of major corporations responsible for crimes against humanity. Their group, Emergent Movement of Militant Anarchists, or EMMA, believes the power elite will never listen to hollow threats or become intimidated by pranksters like Anonymous. They will listen only when they are forced to live in a state of terror. That's the mere skeleton of the plot, but what follows, the twists and turns, the surprises, the action and suspense, and the masterful way the author delves into the lives of the principal characters, add the beef. A black ops officer turned terrorist is not the story of a renegade NCS commando gone bonkers. Rather the novel tells of a young man, Brent Cossack, accepted into Georgetown University, who decides to forgo college and join the military. As a CIA operative in Iraq, he discovers an ugly truth, and resigns. He returns home and falls in love with a beautiful political activist. Everything seems just swell, until a terrible event in his life pushes him over the edge. FBI agent Rick Clark finds himself in the middle of an investigation that forces him to relive the saddest time in his life. Since his divorce, he has lived alone, avoiding relationships, except those established at work out of necessity, and one established at home, out of choice, with his commiserating dog, Thomas. Marty Robins, a psychologist involved in the investigation, helps resuscitate life into Rick, but his real savior comes later in the form of an unexpected hero that restores hope and meaning in his fragmented life.
EMMA: Emergent Movement of Militant Anarchists by Michael Segedy is every bit as exciting as you'd expect a novel by this talented author to be. A group of political anarchists -embracing a philosophy that holds the state to be unnecessary at best and harmful at worst - use the Web as a tool to achieve what they see as improvements in society. However, within the ranks are some extremists who will only be happy if corporate figures they see as evil are removed permanently. The key figure in the action is Brent Cossack, a CIA operative who is forced to resign after becoming disillusioned at discovering some grim truths about American foreign policy. Events conspire to keep him on the edge. Another somewhat disillusioned man, FBI agent Rick Clark, while trying to forget tough personal circumstances, becomes intimately involved in the action. He turns to a psychologist for support and help comes from another quarter too.
The book has everything a modern high-tech thriller needs: computers, terrorists groups, reference to recent actual figures and events, corporate baddies, fanatics driven too far, and troubled but competent, strong, moral investigators. There is breathless tension by the truckload and plenty of high emotion, but it also has pathos and genuinely moving moments. Segedy always creates complex, convincing characters with enough emotional baggage to make them interesting but not crippled. He plunges these individuals into thoroughly researched and imaginative yet disturbingly realistic and plausible scenarios to keep his readers glued to the pages. Even the chapter headings show the thought that this author puts into his work and help keep every word he uses charged with energy and interest. If you haven't already realized from this review, let me tell you that this book is frankly brilliant and you really should read it.
About the Novel -------------------------------------------------------
Imagine a couple young hacktivists, both former members of the internet freedom fighters group Anonymous, and one of them an ex-black ops officer, breaking away and creating a militant group of anarchists committed to social change. But social change precipitated by acts of violence against CEOs of major corporations responsible for crimes against humanity. Their group, Emergent Movement of Militant Anarchists, or EMMA, believes the power elite will never listen to hollow threats or become intimidated by pranksters like Anonymous. They will listen only when they are forced to live in a state of terror. That's the mere skeleton of the plot, but what follows, the twists and turns, the surprises, the action and suspense, and the masterful way the author delves into the lives of the principal characters, add the beef. A black ops officer turned terrorist is not the story of a renegade NCS commando gone bonkers. Rather the novel tells of a young man, Brent Cossack, accepted into Georgetown University, who decides to forgo college and join the military. As a CIA operative in Iraq, he discovers an ugly truth, and resigns. He returns home and falls in love with a beautiful political activist. Everything seems just swell, until a terrible event in his life pushes him over the edge. FBI agent Rick Clark finds himself in the middle of an investigation that forces him to relive the saddest time in his life. Since his divorce, he has lived alone, avoiding relationships, except those established at work out of necessity, and one established at home, out of choice, with his commiserating dog, Thomas. Marty Robins, a psychologist involved in the investigation, helps resuscitate life into Rick, but his real savior comes later in the form of an unexpected hero that restores hope and meaning in his fragmented life.
296 pages, Paperback
First published February 15, 2013
205 people want to read
About the author
Michael Segedy
53 books38 followersMichael Segedy is an award winning author. Over the years he has lived abroad in faraway places such as Taiwan, Israel, Morocco, and Peru. His life overseas has inspired him to write thrillers that include scenes set in foreign lands.
Novels to date:
Hampton Road, a psychological thriller
In Deep, a political thriller
Cupiditas, a political thriller
Evil's Root, a compilation of In Deep and Cupiditas
EMMA: Emergent Movement of Militant Anarchists, a terrorist thriller
Our Darker Angel, a crime thriller
Sanctimonious Serial Killers, a crime thriller
Apart from writing novels, Michael has published three non-fiction works:
A Critical Look at John Gardner's Grendel
Teaching Literature and Writing in the Secondary Classroom
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson with Introduction, Notes, and Lessons by Michael Segedy
He's also published numerous academic articles about literature and writing in various scholarly journals.
Gwendolyn Brooks, former poet laureate of Illinois, presented him with Virginia English Bulletin's first place writing award.
He and his family currently spend half of the year living in the US and the other half in Lima, Peru.
Novels to date:
Hampton Road, a psychological thriller
In Deep, a political thriller
Cupiditas, a political thriller
Evil's Root, a compilation of In Deep and Cupiditas
EMMA: Emergent Movement of Militant Anarchists, a terrorist thriller
Our Darker Angel, a crime thriller
Sanctimonious Serial Killers, a crime thriller
Apart from writing novels, Michael has published three non-fiction works:
A Critical Look at John Gardner's Grendel
Teaching Literature and Writing in the Secondary Classroom
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson with Introduction, Notes, and Lessons by Michael Segedy
He's also published numerous academic articles about literature and writing in various scholarly journals.
Gwendolyn Brooks, former poet laureate of Illinois, presented him with Virginia English Bulletin's first place writing award.
He and his family currently spend half of the year living in the US and the other half in Lima, Peru.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 15, 2013
EMMA a tough, sly thriller
EMMA is a tough, sly book about home-grown terrorism. Most thrillers are simplistic fantasies with little grounding in real world experience. They grab you by the lapels, but the characters rarely live up to the plot. There will some kind of game set up by the bad guy, which will end in godawful catastrophe if it succeeds. It fails because a good guy comes along, and events race along through a dream-world in which brave, red-blooded clear-minded conservative men come together to secure the situation in the nick of time while waving the flag.
This two-dimensional patriotism is rooted in a kind of island psychology created by our geographic isolation. But the really good spy novels are international, which is why the best ones in English have been written by Brits living cheek by jowl with the French, Germans et al. No American espionage writer can go the distance with real heavyweights like Graham Green, John Le Carre or Len Deighton. Michael Segedy isn’t there yet but he’s coming on, and EMMA is as promising as anything I’ve come across in this century. In his way he’s as international as John Burdett, the young expat Brit master. You don’t get the Bangkok chongos or Zen excursions, but the deadly cultural critique is there, along with action that periodically explodes out of nowhere. Segedy has lived much of his adult life abroad, and it’s in his books. He understands the dirty little secret of how big business hooks up with politics and war, and lays it out. It’s the real world, not some quasi-historic quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo.
At his best, Segedy works your forebrain and the primal section all at once, which he can do because he’s done the thinking we tend to avoid. He comes up with some rather shocking and intelligent stuff that keeps you reading, the funky reality of how things actually happen, and what happens when things go wrong. If you wanted to know what Iraq is like, and what it does to the people we send there, buckle your seat belt, because that’s the heart and guts of EMMA, Segedy’s acronym for Emergent Movement of Militant Anarchists. Emma Goldman was the leading anarchist of her time, a notoriously hard-nosed celeb who attempted to assassinate Henry Frick, a malefactor of great wealth. And lest we forget, Emma is a Jane Austen classic – Segedy’s assortment of academic degrees have not killed his sense of humor.
Brent Cossack is a stand-up American guy who puts off college and goes to Iraq because his folks don’t have the money to put him through school. He’s smart and talented, serves his hitch, returns, and then steps into another world, with a job most people can’t handle. He does it, but when he finds out what’s really going on, he has a problem, because he just isn’t a mercenary type. He’s been used, and it’s eating at him. Between his tech aptitude and an attractive woman, he becomes involved with Anonymous. From there he graduates to EMMA, which does not limit itself to internet attacks.
While Cossack is living that life, Rick Clark, a guy not unlike himself in many ways, is working for the FBI, trying to figure out some curious assassinations in which the killing has been done by weapons associated with the victims, corporate execs in the military industrial complex and arms trade. It’s a kind of hard-core poetic justice for people who profit from helping kill other people for money. Like Cossack, Clark is smart, and another a loner of sorts, his wife having left him because he’s too much into his job to be in a relationship. Like Cossack, he has an empty life until he becomes involved with and influenced by a woman with a mind of her own. Segedy’s sense of humor comes out again in the tech-expert partner that Clark has been saddled with, a twisted dick.
The surgical assassination of war-profiteers is hard to get very excited about in this century, given the scale of their crimes. But EMMA turns to politically motivated mass murders, lifting the story to a desperate urgency in which hunter and hunted both seek a vicious, elusive psychopath who has seized the reins at EMMA. His line of work and his depersonalized thinking rub our noses in the nastiness of tech-worship/addiction. Which is interesting, because Segedy is professionally knowledgeable about computer technology.
EMMA is a tough, sly book about home-grown terrorism. Most thrillers are simplistic fantasies with little grounding in real world experience. They grab you by the lapels, but the characters rarely live up to the plot. There will some kind of game set up by the bad guy, which will end in godawful catastrophe if it succeeds. It fails because a good guy comes along, and events race along through a dream-world in which brave, red-blooded clear-minded conservative men come together to secure the situation in the nick of time while waving the flag.
This two-dimensional patriotism is rooted in a kind of island psychology created by our geographic isolation. But the really good spy novels are international, which is why the best ones in English have been written by Brits living cheek by jowl with the French, Germans et al. No American espionage writer can go the distance with real heavyweights like Graham Green, John Le Carre or Len Deighton. Michael Segedy isn’t there yet but he’s coming on, and EMMA is as promising as anything I’ve come across in this century. In his way he’s as international as John Burdett, the young expat Brit master. You don’t get the Bangkok chongos or Zen excursions, but the deadly cultural critique is there, along with action that periodically explodes out of nowhere. Segedy has lived much of his adult life abroad, and it’s in his books. He understands the dirty little secret of how big business hooks up with politics and war, and lays it out. It’s the real world, not some quasi-historic quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo.
At his best, Segedy works your forebrain and the primal section all at once, which he can do because he’s done the thinking we tend to avoid. He comes up with some rather shocking and intelligent stuff that keeps you reading, the funky reality of how things actually happen, and what happens when things go wrong. If you wanted to know what Iraq is like, and what it does to the people we send there, buckle your seat belt, because that’s the heart and guts of EMMA, Segedy’s acronym for Emergent Movement of Militant Anarchists. Emma Goldman was the leading anarchist of her time, a notoriously hard-nosed celeb who attempted to assassinate Henry Frick, a malefactor of great wealth. And lest we forget, Emma is a Jane Austen classic – Segedy’s assortment of academic degrees have not killed his sense of humor.
Brent Cossack is a stand-up American guy who puts off college and goes to Iraq because his folks don’t have the money to put him through school. He’s smart and talented, serves his hitch, returns, and then steps into another world, with a job most people can’t handle. He does it, but when he finds out what’s really going on, he has a problem, because he just isn’t a mercenary type. He’s been used, and it’s eating at him. Between his tech aptitude and an attractive woman, he becomes involved with Anonymous. From there he graduates to EMMA, which does not limit itself to internet attacks.
While Cossack is living that life, Rick Clark, a guy not unlike himself in many ways, is working for the FBI, trying to figure out some curious assassinations in which the killing has been done by weapons associated with the victims, corporate execs in the military industrial complex and arms trade. It’s a kind of hard-core poetic justice for people who profit from helping kill other people for money. Like Cossack, Clark is smart, and another a loner of sorts, his wife having left him because he’s too much into his job to be in a relationship. Like Cossack, he has an empty life until he becomes involved with and influenced by a woman with a mind of her own. Segedy’s sense of humor comes out again in the tech-expert partner that Clark has been saddled with, a twisted dick.
The surgical assassination of war-profiteers is hard to get very excited about in this century, given the scale of their crimes. But EMMA turns to politically motivated mass murders, lifting the story to a desperate urgency in which hunter and hunted both seek a vicious, elusive psychopath who has seized the reins at EMMA. His line of work and his depersonalized thinking rub our noses in the nastiness of tech-worship/addiction. Which is interesting, because Segedy is professionally knowledgeable about computer technology.
December 26, 2021
Reading the synopsis really hit all the interest points for me: techno-thriller, espionage, hacking, detective, anarchism. It also starts the story off strong. Unfortunately, it is a very middle-of-the-road novel that doesn't really take any of those tasks through in an interesting way.
It doesn't show a Hackers/Kevin Mitnick knowledge of anything cyber-related. The espionage is a bad guy that doesn't really show until the last 10 pages of the book with no real motive and no real need to take the route he did. The detective story pretty much boils down to the suspect calling the detective and giving him all the details. As for anarchism - either right or left - I couldn't tell where the author was coming from. At certain points, it seems like some of the characters (and therefore the author) supports a left-center viewpoint but then there's a very big misstatement about Silk Road. Silk Road never had child photos or hitmen available as the founder had a non-aggression principle as the basis for it.
It's not all bad but it didn't really deliver on any one of the genre points. It was also difficult to tell who's POV the audience was suppose to follow and the flipping between past and present didn't really do much to endear any character in reading it. There is an interesting character with a more than photographic memory but then she disappears from the story towards the end; really a shame she wasn't fleshed out more. Final Grade - D
It doesn't show a Hackers/Kevin Mitnick knowledge of anything cyber-related. The espionage is a bad guy that doesn't really show until the last 10 pages of the book with no real motive and no real need to take the route he did. The detective story pretty much boils down to the suspect calling the detective and giving him all the details. As for anarchism - either right or left - I couldn't tell where the author was coming from. At certain points, it seems like some of the characters (and therefore the author) supports a left-center viewpoint but then there's a very big misstatement about Silk Road. Silk Road never had child photos or hitmen available as the founder had a non-aggression principle as the basis for it.
It's not all bad but it didn't really deliver on any one of the genre points. It was also difficult to tell who's POV the audience was suppose to follow and the flipping between past and present didn't really do much to endear any character in reading it. There is an interesting character with a more than photographic memory but then she disappears from the story towards the end; really a shame she wasn't fleshed out more. Final Grade - D
September 9, 2013
This book was not what I expected. With that out of the way, it was a really great look into motivations and minds. What I thought was going to be an action packed running battle, was actually a trip through the pain wracked minds of Two men, who under other circumstances would find themselves working together.
I won this in a giveaway.
I found this book a bit challenging to read at first, because I had a preconceived notion of what to expect. I know, I know, never judge by the cover. Once I got it through my head, that this was not an action book, but an exploration of the human Psyche, I flew thorough it.
I believe if a reader recognizes that this novel is not supposed to be an action book, but a mystery story heavily influenced by the inner worlds of the main characters they will enjoy it.
The only two issues I ran into with this book, besides my assumptions, was that some of the flashback scenes are difficult to keep separate. Both Characters remember the same event from different point of views, but have the same emotional response, so it can be a bit difficult to recall who is having the memory. There are flashbacks for secondary characters, that really seem to do nothing for the story, and are not followed up on.
Second, I was having trouble figuring out who some of the scenes were referring to. It wasn't until the end that I believe i figured out what some of the scenes referred too, this was due to characters having duel identities, as these scenes, while well written seemed to have nothing to do with the overall story. Near the end it becomes apparent that the author is attempting to further illustrate the damage to the main characters emotional state.
Overall, it was a nice read. Just do yourself a favor and make no assumptions about what you will be reading at any point in the book.
I won this in a giveaway.
I found this book a bit challenging to read at first, because I had a preconceived notion of what to expect. I know, I know, never judge by the cover. Once I got it through my head, that this was not an action book, but an exploration of the human Psyche, I flew thorough it.
I believe if a reader recognizes that this novel is not supposed to be an action book, but a mystery story heavily influenced by the inner worlds of the main characters they will enjoy it.
The only two issues I ran into with this book, besides my assumptions, was that some of the flashback scenes are difficult to keep separate. Both Characters remember the same event from different point of views, but have the same emotional response, so it can be a bit difficult to recall who is having the memory. There are flashbacks for secondary characters, that really seem to do nothing for the story, and are not followed up on.
Second, I was having trouble figuring out who some of the scenes were referring to. It wasn't until the end that I believe i figured out what some of the scenes referred too, this was due to characters having duel identities, as these scenes, while well written seemed to have nothing to do with the overall story. Near the end it becomes apparent that the author is attempting to further illustrate the damage to the main characters emotional state.
Overall, it was a nice read. Just do yourself a favor and make no assumptions about what you will be reading at any point in the book.
September 5, 2013
Michael Segedy's EMMA is a work with lots of potential, but ultimately held back by its topicality. The myriad current events and pop-culture references, and their subsequent explanations, are awkward and damaging to immersion. The plot points are interesting and developed well enough, unlike the characters, who play little more than tired cliches with stilted dialogue.
Looking past this (which is difficult), you'll find a reasonably competent Connelly-esque thriller novel with a few solid plot twists. While the realistic 'what-if' nature of the novel provides a lot of its draw, I wish Segedy had left the world it occupies a little more ambiguous. The best novels don't carry their publication date within their pages, and in EMMA's struggle to carve a niche, it dates itself all too well.
Looking past this (which is difficult), you'll find a reasonably competent Connelly-esque thriller novel with a few solid plot twists. While the realistic 'what-if' nature of the novel provides a lot of its draw, I wish Segedy had left the world it occupies a little more ambiguous. The best novels don't carry their publication date within their pages, and in EMMA's struggle to carve a niche, it dates itself all too well.
October 10, 2013
Elmore Leonard will be sorely missed. However, Mike Segedy’s latest, EMMA, reflects that Midwest sensibility and adds a few new twists to the tried and true detective-thriller novel. It’s set in Washington DC, and Segedy addresses Internet privacy, the NSA and government snooping, occupy Wall Street, anarchists, and individual freedom in a dense, well-written novel that grabs your attention and doesn’t let up (the highbrow literary references are appreciated). The book just may make you reflect further on the cases against Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, the recent indictments of Anonymous members, the government infiltration of Tor, and what ultimately transpires in Syria. Enjoy the ride.
April 10, 2013
A wonderful thriller full of adventure, romance, political and social themes. If you love crime novels, in particular, cybercrime novels, you'll love this one. The plot is suspenseful and engaging and the characters memorable. I put it high on my list.
October 30, 2015
Loved the title's double pun; great read, and timely.
March 4, 2015
Interesting read, it really steps off the pages and grabs your attention. I enjoyed it, its a thriller I recommend.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews