This is author John Sager's seventh novel, each of which reflects his fifty-plus years' service with the CIA. But Crescent Blood is a whole new ball game: new characters and a new environment. The story is a realistic exposition of America's struggle with a most unusual enemy: ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. It deals with real people but retains its fictional premise: The first woman president of the United States, elevated to the position by virtue of the murder of the man she helped elect president. The butchery of Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria. The deadly meddling of Vladimir Putin, Russia's cunning president. The story reminds its readers of the unappreciated cooperation between the FBI and the CIA, how the two services work together for the greater good. As the title suggests, the region still known as The Fertile Crescent is indeed a place of much bloodshed, and a contest between the world's only superpower and a shadowy group of Muslim jihadists who have vowed to spread their evil ideology far and wide. The contest's 'winner' will control the world.