Man of the hour - Peter Blauner

Explosive follow-up psychological thriller to the international bestseller THE INTRUDER. A thrilling expose of what happens when terror and disaster strike a man just as he finally achieves his goal in life. David Fitzgerald, estranged from his depressive wife and their son, is a teacher in the midst of a multi-racial melting pot of students at Coney Island High School, New York. Every day the atmosphere in the classroom is explosive but David perseveres. Sometimes it's worth it -- especially in the case of his star pupil Elizabeth Hamdy, a beautiful shy Muslim girl whose father brought the family to America where, following the suicide of his wife, a fanatical freedom fighter, he has married an American woman. Elizabeth is excited by her new life as an American teenager, shedding her traditional 'hijab' veil for Tommy Hilfiger and Gap much to the horror of her brother, mini-cab driver Nasser who, like his dead mother, is a fanatic ready to die for the cause of the Jihad. David is the son of a WWII hero and obssessed with heroism. On a school bus taking his class on a field trip to study heroism at a museum, a bomb explodes and David becomes a hero when he rescues a student.;Now he is the man of the hour, a media star, a hero for his pupils. Then a bag exactly like David's is found on the bus and suddenly he finds himself no longer the hero, but the suspect hounded by the press, under investigation by the police, and involved in trying to stop the next terrorist assignment.