REVIEW: Nir Tavor Mossad — Out of the Far North (BOOK)
The Nir Tavor Mossad series is what I would call a thriller series with real-world consequences. Amir Tsarfati and Steve Yohn combine informed creativity with what feels like lived-experience given their histories, Tsarfati as a former major in the IDF and the founder and president of Behold Israel, Steve Yohn a former pastor serving as the organization’s senior writer and editor. The latest book in the Nir Tavor Mossad series is titled Out of the Far North, focusing on Israel bracing itself for a showdown with Russia after Western markets turn to Israel for energy needs. In a manner and narrative similar to BBC’s Prime Suspect, or the French television show The Bureau, the main characters are affiliated with Israel’s elite fighting forces, and the Mossad secret service agency.
It is up to them to turn the tide in a storyline that honors its real-life source material, and real-world components, still allowing for the universal tenets making a thriller work. In short, good, old-fashioned suspense, richly developed characters, sinister villains, and the shadowy hue of conspiracy and intrigue that never lets up even when our heroes may have found some modicum of peace in the book’s final act. It’s passages like the following, however, that add some welcome panache to tropes tried and true, often existent within frameworks derivative of masterworks established many years before them.
“‘Where your logic breaks down is that God doesn’t need us. He would be perfectly fine without us being around, right? Why would He give His son’s life for a bunch of people who all they’re going to do is rebel against Him and make His life miserable? It’s a bad deal for him and it makes no sense.’…He had never thought of it that way before.
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For so long, he hadn’t been able to get over his need for a transactional salvation. You give to me; I give to You. That’s how the world worked. But that little Syrian girl had nothing to offer him. She couldn’t earn her rescue. There was no bargain to be made. It was just Nir and his team-men who would be killed in a heartbeat by the crowd if their true identities were discovered. It was just us sacrificing out of love, expecting nothing in return. Nicolés point is that this was the same way Jesus sacrificed Himself out of love, knowing that there was nothing I had to offer that was worth the price He paid. ‘That makes sense, Nicole. For the first time, I get it.’ Nicole took his hands in hers. ‘So, does that mean you’re ready, Nir? Salvation is just a commitment away. It’s just a prayer saying that you’re ready to accept Jesus as your Savior and your Lord.’ ‘Right here on the beach? No fancy ceremony in a church somewhere? Don’t I need some water to get dunked in?’…
She turned so that she was facing the Mediterranean again. Nir put his arm around her, and she laid her head on his shoulder. They sat like that for another hour, enjoying the sounds of the waves and watching the birds as they rode the wind currents that blew in from distant shores. Nir nodded off a couple times, and Nicole suggested they head home. They held hands as they walked to his little hatchback. Then they made their way back to Tel Aviv.”
It’s the kind of matter-of-factness of neo-noir, American frontier fiction, crossed with the cultural richness and theological and ideological variety existent in Israel. A welcome revival of fiction I haven’t seen in genuine, quality form for some time. Something also, that would make a terrific film…
Colin Jordan
