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Target: Hollywood
Two cousins raised in the slums of Beirut. One determined to strike terror in the heart of American decadence. The other desperate to stop him. A plot from the dawn of America's war on terror by award-winning author and former CBS News Middle East correspondent Lawrence Pintak.
"As Beirut rushed beneath him, Ali could see tiny figures on the roofs of some buildings. Down there were his family and friends, the gunmen and religious fanatics. Everything he loved and hated of his former life. Down there lived the demons he wanted to escape but must now confront."
Ali Ghaddar had made a new life for himself far from the violence of his native Beirut. But even Northwestern University wasn't far enough to keep the demons at bay. Each new terrorist outrage back home left him feeling more angry and helpless.
So when his girlfriend's father was kidnapped by a militia group controlled by the cousin he once considered a brother, it didn't take the CIA long to convince him to go back and try to save him. In the process, he stumbled on a chilling plot to strike at the icons of Hollywood in an audacious high-profile attack. Working with OSIRIS, a secret anti-terrorist strike team, Ali plunged back into the nightmare he thought he had escaped, torn between family ties, the desperate need to save his girlfriend's father, and the realization that the fate of countless Americans lay in his hands.
"As Beirut rushed beneath him, Ali could see tiny figures on the roofs of some buildings. Down there were his family and friends, the gunmen and religious fanatics. Everything he loved and hated of his former life. Down there lived the demons he wanted to escape but must now confront."
Ali Ghaddar had made a new life for himself far from the violence of his native Beirut. But even Northwestern University wasn't far enough to keep the demons at bay. Each new terrorist outrage back home left him feeling more angry and helpless.
So when his girlfriend's father was kidnapped by a militia group controlled by the cousin he once considered a brother, it didn't take the CIA long to convince him to go back and try to save him. In the process, he stumbled on a chilling plot to strike at the icons of Hollywood in an audacious high-profile attack. Working with OSIRIS, a secret anti-terrorist strike team, Ali plunged back into the nightmare he thought he had escaped, torn between family ties, the desperate need to save his girlfriend's father, and the realization that the fate of countless Americans lay in his hands.
- GenresFiction
340 pages, Paperback
Published February 1, 2022
1 person is currently reading
573 people want to read
About the author
Lawrence Pintak
7 books3 followersLawrence Pintak has spent his life grounded in facts while fascinated by the ethereal. An award-winning former CBS News Middle East correspondent with a PhD in Islamic Studies, Pintak has been a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism for three decades and is an avid student of the perennial truths at the core of the world’s religions.
The author of seven books at the intersection of religion, media, and policy, his reporting and analysis on religion and international affairs has been published by The New York Times, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and many of the world’s leading media organizations. He also wrote about Buddhism and Eastern traditions for Shambhala Sun/Lion’s Roar, Buddhadharma, Beliefnet.com and others before 9/11 drew his focus back to the Middle East. Pintak’s 2019 book, America & Islam, was a finalist for the Religion News Association award for Religion Reporting Excellence. A second edition, including the Gaza war, will be released in October.
Pintak served as founding dean of The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University , dean of the Graduate School of Media and Communications at The Aga Khan University in East Africa, director of the Arab world’s leading media training center in the years leading up to the Arab Spring, and helped establish Pakistan’s Centre for Excellence in Journalism. He was named a Fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists in 2017 for “extraordinary service to the profession of journalism” around the world.
The author of seven books at the intersection of religion, media, and policy, his reporting and analysis on religion and international affairs has been published by The New York Times, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and many of the world’s leading media organizations. He also wrote about Buddhism and Eastern traditions for Shambhala Sun/Lion’s Roar, Buddhadharma, Beliefnet.com and others before 9/11 drew his focus back to the Middle East. Pintak’s 2019 book, America & Islam, was a finalist for the Religion News Association award for Religion Reporting Excellence. A second edition, including the Gaza war, will be released in October.
Pintak served as founding dean of The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University , dean of the Graduate School of Media and Communications at The Aga Khan University in East Africa, director of the Arab world’s leading media training center in the years leading up to the Arab Spring, and helped establish Pakistan’s Centre for Excellence in Journalism. He was named a Fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists in 2017 for “extraordinary service to the profession of journalism” around the world.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 11, 2022
Lawrence Pintak, in his first fiction book 'Target: Hollywood,' demonstrates an excruciating, mentally and physically, attempt to stop terrorists from attacking the Golden State.
When Ali, a young, ambitious Lebanese, left Beirut for the USA to study economics, he didn't think he would ever return with the sole purpose of spying on his cousin. At the time of his mission, he didn't know what was at stake and how many lives across several countries depended on his ability to be secretive and courageous. Being a pawn in the giant chess party that included the national interests of Iran, Russia, and the USA (among others), Ali couldn't predict how his actions would alter the course of international politics.
Lawrence Pintak's expertise as a reporter and the author of five non-fiction books on the Middle East helped him create the highly believable scenario of the attack on Hollywood. On all levels, from the OSIRIS's command (counter-terrorist American agency) to the individuals like Ali and his brother Hassan, the story amuses with its attention to detail. Shifting between different characters' views, especially at the end of the story, when the attack is imminent (and I won't tell you was it stopped or not!) doesn't slow down the reading. Capable characters, well-researched setting, and complex plot make the story terrifyingly realistic.
I can recommend the book as a captivating, big-stake thriller. Maybe, today terrorism is not the main topic on the international news, but it's here, behind the closed doors, in the dark allies, and even within the cabinets of high-ranking officials. The book reminds us once more that we should be aware that evil can strike us in the very heart when we least expect it.
'Target: Hollywood' is one of those books that deserves to be turned into a blockbuster. The moviegoers will love the breakneck story as well as the romance between Ali and his girlfriend Lisa.
I received the advanced review copy through Reedsy Discovery, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
When Ali, a young, ambitious Lebanese, left Beirut for the USA to study economics, he didn't think he would ever return with the sole purpose of spying on his cousin. At the time of his mission, he didn't know what was at stake and how many lives across several countries depended on his ability to be secretive and courageous. Being a pawn in the giant chess party that included the national interests of Iran, Russia, and the USA (among others), Ali couldn't predict how his actions would alter the course of international politics.
Lawrence Pintak's expertise as a reporter and the author of five non-fiction books on the Middle East helped him create the highly believable scenario of the attack on Hollywood. On all levels, from the OSIRIS's command (counter-terrorist American agency) to the individuals like Ali and his brother Hassan, the story amuses with its attention to detail. Shifting between different characters' views, especially at the end of the story, when the attack is imminent (and I won't tell you was it stopped or not!) doesn't slow down the reading. Capable characters, well-researched setting, and complex plot make the story terrifyingly realistic.
I can recommend the book as a captivating, big-stake thriller. Maybe, today terrorism is not the main topic on the international news, but it's here, behind the closed doors, in the dark allies, and even within the cabinets of high-ranking officials. The book reminds us once more that we should be aware that evil can strike us in the very heart when we least expect it.
'Target: Hollywood' is one of those books that deserves to be turned into a blockbuster. The moviegoers will love the breakneck story as well as the romance between Ali and his girlfriend Lisa.
I received the advanced review copy through Reedsy Discovery, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
February 18, 2022
This immensely readable book should have been published 35 years ago
It comes as no spoiler that this terrorist thriller will ultimately take us to Hollywood. Just published, though written in the mid-1980s, it's an utterly prescient novel, imagining accurately the actions and reasoning behind a Mullah-inspired attack on America 15 years before 9/11.
Larry Pintak creates a story of two Lebanese cousins raised as brothers in the Shi'a faith in 1970s Beirut. They diverge after adolescence. When we meet them, Ali is studying in graduate school in Chicago; Hassan is deep into the militarized conspiring resentments of Beirut. The kidnapping of Ali's American girlfriend's father gives US intelligence the opportunity to recruit him as an inside agent in his cousin's world. Ali's journey into that world gives the plot all it needs to keep the pages turning.
As CBS Middle East Correspondent, Larry Pintak covered the devastating 1983 attack on the US Marine barracks, airliner hijackings, endless suicide bombings and political kidnappings of innocents, and the civil strife that still defines Beirut. Writing was the constant as his career morphed from the frontlines of conflict journalism through five nonfiction books on journalism and the Islamic world and ultimately an entrepreneurial role in leading new university-based schools of journalism in the USA and East Africa.
Target: Hollywood reflects his deep knowledge of the currents flowing beneath the surface across the Islamic cultures of the Arab world and Iran, plus what he learned from off-the-record sources in Middle Eastern and Western intelligence communities. Timely publication of this deeply realistic imagining of the first catastrophic foreign terror attack on America would likely never have made it easier for intelligence agencies to anticipate such an event as accurately as Pintak predicted the possibility of it. Who knows? The wings of that particular cosmic butterfly were clipped when Bertelsman acquired Doubleday in 1986 and canceled Target: Hollywood's publication.
It comes as no spoiler that this terrorist thriller will ultimately take us to Hollywood. Just published, though written in the mid-1980s, it's an utterly prescient novel, imagining accurately the actions and reasoning behind a Mullah-inspired attack on America 15 years before 9/11.
Larry Pintak creates a story of two Lebanese cousins raised as brothers in the Shi'a faith in 1970s Beirut. They diverge after adolescence. When we meet them, Ali is studying in graduate school in Chicago; Hassan is deep into the militarized conspiring resentments of Beirut. The kidnapping of Ali's American girlfriend's father gives US intelligence the opportunity to recruit him as an inside agent in his cousin's world. Ali's journey into that world gives the plot all it needs to keep the pages turning.
As CBS Middle East Correspondent, Larry Pintak covered the devastating 1983 attack on the US Marine barracks, airliner hijackings, endless suicide bombings and political kidnappings of innocents, and the civil strife that still defines Beirut. Writing was the constant as his career morphed from the frontlines of conflict journalism through five nonfiction books on journalism and the Islamic world and ultimately an entrepreneurial role in leading new university-based schools of journalism in the USA and East Africa.
Target: Hollywood reflects his deep knowledge of the currents flowing beneath the surface across the Islamic cultures of the Arab world and Iran, plus what he learned from off-the-record sources in Middle Eastern and Western intelligence communities. Timely publication of this deeply realistic imagining of the first catastrophic foreign terror attack on America would likely never have made it easier for intelligence agencies to anticipate such an event as accurately as Pintak predicted the possibility of it. Who knows? The wings of that particular cosmic butterfly were clipped when Bertelsman acquired Doubleday in 1986 and canceled Target: Hollywood's publication.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews