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The rise of the Islamic State terrorism organization in Syria and Iraq has provided plenty of plausible material for thriller novel writers, especially the extremists’ attacks in Europe.

Last year’s “The Black Widow” by Daniel Silva is one example. Alex Berenson’s “The Prisoner” is another. Both novels take readers beyond where journalism can take them, even if the scenes and plots are imagined.

One wonders if such novels are read by Islamic State leaders. If so, do the extremists find inspiration from the fictional stories or do they laugh at the plots? Who can say?

What matters is that readers can gain insights into what it takes to foil the kind of attacks that have happened in Paris and elsewhere.

The premise in Berenson’s “The Prisoner” is this: A CIA-backed operation launched from Turkey into Syria is met with failure and death because the Islamic State obviously had been tipped off.

The tip-offs have happened enough that the U.S. president, a former CIA director, quietly enlists ex-CIA agent John Wells, the protagonist in Berenson’s thriller series, to go under cover in the Arab world as an Islamic State convert.

The Prisoner

By Alex Berenson

Putnam, $28

Wells’ goal is to land in a brutal Bulgarian prison that holds another Islamic State prisoner who has been overheard claiming knowledge of an upcoming attack.

Meanwhile, a CIA officer at the agency’s headquarters, Ellis Shafer, tries to root out evidence on who among the CIA’s top leadership circle might be feeding information to the terrorist group, coordinating with his friend, Wells.

A third plot developed concurrently takes readers into the Islamic State itself as a scientist devotee manufactures quantities of the nerve gas sarin for the group’s next surprise attack.

The plots, of course, converge in the thrilling fictional climax, with clever twists and turns along the way. Berenson’s extensive research helps make the plot believable.

An underlying message in both Silva’s and Berenson’s novels is that the main goal of real Islamic State attacks is to pull the United States and other Western militaries into a ground war in Syria and Iraq.

The novels do not try to explain what an effective military strategy against the jihadists might be.

But the insights provided by the novels give readers a better understanding of why a ground war should be avoided, no matter the size and scale of any future attacks.

dhendricks@express-news.net

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