Emelina Quintillan’s book review, February 4, 2014

By Emelina Quintillan

This review is from: HEGEMONY: A Political Thriller (Kindle Edition)
HEGEMONY: A Political Thriller
Author: Elizabeth Ferido-Bohlin
Reviewed: February 2014
Reviewer: Emelina Quintillan

A thesis dissertation presented as a fictionalized political thriller? What a creative and novel idea!

The book Hegemony: A Political Thriller is a reaction to the spreading Islamization of Sweden & other countries in Europe. The thriller is set in Stockholm, Sweden during a Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in the Stockholm Concert Hall. It revolves around a terrorist plot involving a Saudi prince’s visit to Sweden to finalize an agreement on the purchase of military aircraft.

Isabelle Blanche de Forte is looking forward to defending her doctoral thesis in a few days. When a small microchip is hidden in her book and she discovers a headless corpse on a couch in the apartment complex where she lives, she becomes entangled in a murder investigation that is connected to a terrorist plot that pits Islam against Christianity. The thriller slowly builds up from the death of the Saudi ambassador, to the murder of Marit, to the search of the microchip, to the attempts on the life of Isabelle and, finally, the tension between the decisions of Monirah & Isabelle as they grapple with the microchip program.

The author examines Sweden’s national identity crisis and speculates about the consequences of political correctness and multiculturalism in the light of the debates over the acceptance of Turkey to the European Union. Will the acceptance of Turkey to the European Union be a threat to the Judeo-Christian identity of Europe? Political Scientists interested in European events would find such lines of thoughts interesting. Those who enjoy Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Morse, and writers of Scandinavian crime fiction will enjoy the dialectics and sequences of the Stockholm Police Superintendent Robert von Ramm. The book presents intelligent women in varied roles as well as the two faces of Islam as symbolized by Prince Mallah and Prince Fareed.

As a fictionalized dissertation, the book is intelligently written and is obviously well-researched. The author wisely ends the book in suspended suspense, leaving the reader breathlessly wondering. The gate is open to a sequel. As a thriller, a reader could forget that the book was in fact written for an academic thesis. Readers will find the book entertaining, thrilling, and thought provoking

The book is available in hardcover, paperback, and eBook. I downloaded the book to my computer.

Hegemony: A Political Thriller

Elizabeth Ferido-Bohlin
Xlibris, 425 pages, (paperback) $18.66, 978-1-4931-1397-2
(Reviewed: January, 2013)-Blueink Review

Set in 2014 Sweden during the 113th Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in the historic Stockholm Concert Hall and revolving around a terrorist plot involving a Saudi prince’s visit to Sweden to finalize an agreement involving the purchase of state-of-the-art military aircraft, this intricately plotted novel is essentially a murder mystery wrapped around a doctoral thesis.

Isabelle Blanche de Forte, a student in the political science doctoral program at Stockholm University, is just days away from defending her thesis. But when she discovers a headless corpse sitting on a couch in the prestigious complex where she lives, she becomes entangled in a murder investigation that is connected to a major political scandal and a terrorist plot that, if successful, could change the balance of power in the world.

The storyline is much more complex than a simple whodunit. The author explores Sweden’s national identity crisis and speculates about the consequences of political correctness and embracing multiculturalism in the European Union. Both lines of thought are fascinating. And readers who enjoy Scandinavian crime fiction by writers such as Mankell, Jungstedt,and Larsson will enjoy the story’s stark atmospherics and sequences with beleaguered Stockholm Police Superintendent Robert von Ramm. While this is an intelligently written and obviously well-researched fusion of police procedural and political thriller, the academic undertone—particularly the 41-page PhD thesis dropped into the novel in its latter stages—gives the narrative a dry, detached, and somewhat didactic feel.

Bottom line? As a fictionalized dissertation about the spread of Islam (specifically the accession of Turkey into the European Union and its threat to irrevocably change the Judeo-Christian identity of Europe), this is a powerful piece. As a thriller, however, it loses much of that power with a slow and methodical narrative that, as mentioned earlier, has a decidedly dry and scholarly undertone. Readers looking for the former will find the book both entertaining and thought-provoking.Also available in hardcover and ebook.

Hegemony: A Political Thriller

Clarita Go Miraflor, PhD., RN, CHCQM
Founding President, Philippine Nurses Association of America
Date of Review: 26 March 2014

In-between my very busy schedule, I told my husband that I am going to finish the book which I just did!

My My and wow wow wow!!! IMPRESSIVE, AWESOME, AMAZING, INTRIGUING, EXCITING, TIMELY and ENJOYABLE Book!! Such eloquence, a sign of a great author!

I noted familiar characters, beautiful descriptions of Stockholm, Oxford University, the house at 40 Marlborough Rd. Holy Road Church, etc. in the book. I was enamored with the ” education” I was receiving as I turn the pages of your well written, well researched , interesting and thrilling book!! I have been fascinated by the heroine – what happened to Isabelle? My conclusion is that she became a well travelled, much sought speaker in international politics, married Robert and lived happily ever after, hehehhhe!!

I encourage you to have your Agent bring you to the United States by contacting the right people at Fox News for a guest spot and Hollywood to produce a film based on this political thriller. I am very proud of your outstanding achievement and look forward to the next publication.

Take care, loving hugs and God speed,
Clarita

Hegemony: An Oxford thesis wrapped in a political thriller

By Contributor, Corito Fiel
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Hegemony, a novel by Swedish-Filipino Elizabeth Ferido-Bohlin, is a serious, scholarly treatise wrapped delicately in a political thriller as exciting as they come—garnished with servings of a budding romance; the murder of the Saudi Arabian ambassador and a sensational, ritualistic beheading gripping peaceful Sweden; espionage and skulduggery; treachery and betrayal in high places; and, as cliffhanger, terror in the skies.
Set in the backdrop of a Sweden all agog over the 113th anniversary of the Nobel Prize ceremony usually held at the magnificent Stockholm Concert Hall, a young, innocent Isabelle, lugging her book-bound Oxford thesis that she is about to defend before her peers, descends into the bowels of the Ostermalm building where she resides and finds herself in Valfisken Hall. Entranced by the opulent surroundings, she is drawn to four pairs of swords attached to a wall: the Katana/Samurai, the Crusader, the Scimitar/Shamshir, and the Viking.
But Isabelle remembers she has to attend a party and departs in haste. She forgets her book, which is discovered by the prostitute Marit Fagger, who comes to Valfisken Hall to meet another Ostermalm resident. The wily Marit, out to extort a pretty sum for the mysterious microchip she stole from her paramour, the Saudi ambassador (who dies in the hands of Muslim fundamentalists disguised as Saudi Embassy personnel), hides it in Isabelle’s book—and is gruesomely killed by the pugnacious Saudi Embassy press attaché, Mohammed Fathi, swinging the Scimitar to cut off her head.
The chase is on to recover the microchip, involving Wahhabis embedded in the Saudi Embassy; their Iranian rivals; unsuspecting Stockholm police led by the dashing Superintendent Robert von Ramm, tasked to solve the twin murders; and the Quisling diplomat Leopold Poole Svinfoth, working for the third richest man in the world, Prince Mallah, who wants to use Sweden as his beachhead to reconquer a secular Europe with the Islamic sword.

The core of the book, however, is Isabelle’s Oxford thesis, about the stealthy, “soft” Muslim re-invasion of Europe, as the continent grapples with the question of Turkish entry into the European Union. As Isabelle defends her thesis, the reader actually reads her thoughts: 75 million Turkish Muslims eventually flooding Europe, already saddled with the problem of 53 million hostile and unassimilated Muslim residents within its borders, a potentially explosive situation that could endanger tenets Europeans take for granted—liberty, equality before the law, religious freedom, and solidarity—fruits of 2000 years of Judeo-Christian ethics that define Europe as Christian.
The book’s prologue contends that the Islamization of Europe is “fortified by political leaders, mainstream media, and so-called public intellectuals” enthralled by the forces of multiculturalism, relativism, and political correctness. Secularism, in particular, is aggressively pushing Christianity to the graveyard, as Bohlin puts it. An awakened Muslim soul, adds Bohlin, “has surreptitiously entered through the rectum of those who wield political power across the Judeo-Christian world.”
Only the Hegemon that is the Holy See stands in the way of the “charm offensive” by political Islam. The Holy See, without any army, is the Phantom State that commands the respect of the rest of the world.
In the book’s concluding chapters, the microchip is found and thus, a race to decipher its code and disable it. But a plane explodes in the sky. Which plane? That which carries the Pope? Or the plane of the Iranian president? In Isabelle’s steady hands rest the fates of both men.