Rogue States is a timely novel about the face of terrorism in the modern world. The central character, September Sullivan, is the anchor of a fictional news channel called CNX; and like many modern anchors, travels to trouble spots in the world where her life is at risk. While she is in Bosnia, her cameraman is murdered by Croat rebels and she is taken captive, to be used as a means of manipulating the media to the Croatian cause.

Although she is rescued by U.N. peacekeepers, the death of Tom Crezanczak, her cameraman, activates memories of violence about her childhood in Belfast during the height of IRA activism. Her brother, Paddy Sullivan, and the first big romance of her life, Roddy McCafferty, were involved in an IRA cell which in 1984 planned to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her entire Conservative Cabinet at the Grand Hotel in Brighton. When Roddy confesses to the assassination plot in order to impress September, she tells her father; and Liam Sullivan loses his life in an attempt to defuse the bomb.

September’s guilt about causing the death of her father leads to a fear of intimate relationships. Although she marries her station boss Dan Warren, her dedication to a world in crisis leads to their increasing alienation and divorce.

It is at this time that September meets singer Karla Detwieler and their friendship becomes the focus of her social life. She is not aware, however, that Karla is a lesbian with a growing desire for her, or that September herself is the subject of several of Karla’s love songs, which
are climbing the charts.

When the anchor sees a woman make a pass at Karla, she withdraws from the friendship--until an attempt on Karla’s life makes her aware that she is in love with the singer. The target of the misguided bullet, however, is Roddy McCafferty, her former boyfriend, who is posing as
highly respected journalist and speaker James Larimer.

Aware that September knows him as an IRA terrorist, he tries to silence her by threatening further harm to Karla Detwieler. September and ex-husband Dan Warren spirit Karla out of Vancouver, Canada, unaware that she and her father Carl will be flying into New York at the time the World Trade Center is crumbling under the attack of bin-Laden’s Al-Qaida cell.

“James Larimer”/McCafferty sees footage which reveals Karla Detwieler emerging from the WTC as the tower crumbles. Aware, therefore, that Karla is in New York, he assigns hit man Clive Tanner to locate her and Carl Detwieler. September scrambles to contact the Detwielers without leading Roddy or his hired assassin straight to their door.

Rogue States deals with, but does not espouse, some of the conspiracy theories about U.S. government collusion immediately before and after the attack on the Trade Center: i.e. that the Al-Qaida conspiracy was manipulated by the United States in order to build a case for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The idea that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (the WMD angle) is treated as an offshoot of Roddy McCafferty’s desire to increase his profits as an international arms smuggler. CNX’s refusal to promote this theory accelerates the threat against Karla’s life; and leads to a crisis in journalistic and personal ethics for September Sullivan.

Her investigation into McCafferty’s activities uncovers a terrorist ”anti-terrorist” training facility in Vancouver, Canada, and an airline breaching device called the Beast. It also leads the anchor to discover that both contraband and illegal aliens are making their way into Canada in container traffic through over 233 kilometres of coastline around the Burrard Inlet. That criminal activity through the Port of Vancouver, and the June 22, 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182, give a Canadian face to terrorist activities. The novel deals with the twenty year delay in bringing Sikh militants to trial and the possibly deliberate destruction of evidence that hampered this trial into the deaths of 329 people.

As September investigates Roddy McCafferty’s role in international terrorism, she discovers that Canadians too are providing arms and terrorist training to Middle Eastern and other revolutionaries.

But death and bereavement are not behind September Sullivan, as she deals with the escape and murder of her brother Paddy Sullivan, and the machinations of a persistent hit man against the family of her beloved.

An excerpt of the writing in Rogue States:

She had no sooner exited the cave when she kicked a stone in her path. She stood immobilized, listening to it ricochet down the cliff. Suddenly a hand was placed over her mouth and she was held in a hard embrace. “Quiet,” the man whispered. He allowed her to stand away from him long enough to identify his U.N. insignia and motioned her down the trail.

“There are guards--”

The American soldier shrugged. “Drunk.” He gestured towards a boulder where a light shadow sprawled against beige stone.

“The injured man--I must bring him water.”

“We’ve got him.” He placed bony fingers in the middle of her spine and pushed. September’s legs broke into a lope on the decline. But she stopped again, determined to do what she had risked her life to do. Then she saw the injured man with a bandana over his mouth to keep him silent. Two men carried him on a narrow stretcher down the steep trail. If these men were peacekeepers, they could not fire on her kidnappers. She owed it to them not to risk their lives by giving the injured man water only to have him yell out a warning to the sleeping camp. She followed her rescuers soberly for long minutes through the trees surrounding the trail. Wet long grass wrapped its way around her pant
legs until she shivered in the chill of dawn. Eventually she heard shouts. Adrenaline flooded her. They were obviously still close to the camp and seriously outnumbered, making their clumsy way through woods they did not know. Jelavic had lost his media trophy and September knew enough about the man to realize that as many people would suffer for that as he could reach with his punishment. But there was no sound of shots. Silence followed the shouting like monkeys falling silent after a wildfire.

“Corporal Simms,” someone pointed at the horizon. Jelavic’s troops were fanning out, in noisy and intimidating lockstep, rifles cocked and aimed.

“Over there,” Simms fired at the cliff above their pursuers. Two of the others picked up on what he was trying to do and splayed bullets into the outcrop. September watched boulders tumble, carrying several Croats in front of them into trees which shattered beneath the weight of rocks. Simms grasped her elbow and ran full tilt from the avalanche he himself had caused. A rat-tat-tat of gunfire splattered earth at her heels, and she heard her rescuers cursing as they tumbled towards the Humvee they had abandoned behind makeshift green branches. Someone threw September into the flatbed of the truck.

The captive Croat nearly fell from his stretcher as the soldiers dumped him at a precarious angle in their haste to climb aboard. September strained not to let him fall to the ground, her arms nearly torn from their sockets, before Simms leant his lean and wiry weight to the effort and pulled him safely inside the Humvee. He slammed the thick doors shut just as bullets rammed into the walls of the truck. The driver swayed from side to side, rolling his passengers like fallen jugs around the secured bunks.

But he got them out of the woods with no blown tires. He got them back to S-FOR-- with a captive who would talk enough to tell them why Jelavic had captured a journalist.