David Wolfe, a successful attorney on the fast track to a political career, is being groomed to run for Congress. He's also engaged to be married. Then, a fateful telephone call—and a voice from his past—begins to change David's life in ways he could never foresee.

On the day after Hana Arif's phone call, Israeli Prime Minister Amos Ben-Aron is assassinated, in San Francisco, by a suicide bomber, and Hana is accused of masterminding the crime. Reluctantly, David, who witnessed the assassination, agrees to defend the Palestinian woman with whom, 13 years earlier, he'd had an affair while in law school.

Although incriminating evidence against Hana is scant and largely hearsay, the prosecution believes it has an ironclad case against her. Certainly, there is no proof that Hana didn't do the crime; she had both motive and opportunity, and she can't substantiate her alibi.

While David has lingering doubts about Hana's innocence, he nevertheless feels a moral obligation to give her the best defense possible. His investigation of others who might have harbored motives for Ben-Aron's early demise leads him to the Middle East, to Israel and the West Bank, where he seeks information that will exonerate his client.

But David's mission becomes a series of close encounters as some of his contacts, from various ethnic, political or religious factions, meet with violent ends. Certainly, Fatah and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda, Iranian Intelligence, and right-wing radical Jews all had their reasons for wanting Ben-Aron dead; who among them had the wherewithal to carry out such a complex operation?

Shortly after his return to the US, new evidence comes to light that draws David closer to a truth far darker than one he might have imagined. Now, he must use all the legal skills and cunning he possesses to establish Hana's innocence and set her free.

Patterson's latest novel, Exile, is educational, enlightening and entertaining, and a tribute to the author's diligent research. While it doesn't offer anything new to those who've studied Middle East tensions in great detail, it does provide new insights into Arab-Israeli conflicts to those whose knowledge of them is limited to—or shaped by—network televison's evening news.

Exile is a fictional accounting of events that play out, all too often, in real life. It's a story of love and betrayal, of honor and duty, of hate and revenge. It seems to suggest that, of the two great emotions, love and hate, hate is the stronger. Love is sometimes tenuous and often fleeting, but hate (at least the way it exists in the Middle East) is forever.

A former trial lawyer, Richard North Patterson has authored thirteen best selling or critically acclaimed novels, among them Conviction, Balance of Power, Protect and Defend, Dark Lady, and Silent Witness. Patterson, once the SEC's liaison to the Watergate special prosecutor, now serves as chairman of Common Cause, a grassroots citizens lobby. He and his partner, Dr. Nancy Clair, split their time between San Francisco and Martha's Vineyard.

Review by Phil Hanson, for FSB Associates