Authors who were, in retrospect, missing some things.

[the_blue_fenix]

Several years ago I read some of the Mongo mysteries by George Chesbro. Since Chesbro recently died, I went back and got copies of the beginning of the series. The first one that arrived in the mail was book two, City of Whispering Stone, copyright 1978. It's about Iran.
What starts as an Iranian-immigrant missing persons case winds through Iranian

Comments

[oilhistorian]

Well, to be honest, the Iranian Revolution was *not* originally an Islamic revolution, nor were most of the Iranian dissidents originally interested in a theocracy. Animosity toward the Shah in Iran stemmed from the CIA coup that toppled the (equally secular) Mossaedgh government and put Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in power. The massacre of Black Friday, September 8, 1978, had far more to do with energizing the Iranian people toward revolution than any sense of Islamic fervor. Indeed, the Shah and Iran made a veritable fortune selling oil to the West and Israel during the 1973-74 OAPEC oil embargo. While some of the Shi'a clergy did oppose this at the time, there really wasn't much of an outcry about this blatant pro-West and pro-Israeli act. The Shah's willingness to support Israel never mattered much to Iranians until after the Islamic Republic was established and it became a staple of the theocracy's propaganda. As Persians, they really didn't give a flip over the Arabs and their conflict with the Israelis. When the Shah fled on

[eumenidis]

Haven't read any of the books (& probably won't, now), but it sounds very much like Chesbro failed to include a heck of a lot of important cultural & historical context, or else only touched upon it.