Books like One Knight Only

I liked this more than Knight Life, mainly because it avoided most of the politics and focussed on the mythology.This book was published in 2003, so it was written soon after "9/11", i.e. the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9th September 2011. This poses an obvious challenge when your characters are based in New York; where were they on that day? Some fiction just avoids the whole topic (e.g. "Friends"), while others paid direct tribute to it (e.g. an issue of "The Amazing Spider-Man" that J. Michael Straczynski wrote).I think the closest comparison is the comic "Ex Machina", since that also has a protagonist (a former superhero) as mayor of New York. In that series, Mitchell Hundred stopped one of the planes, but the other plane got through and destroyed one of the towers. So, that was enough to make him look heroic, while still giving the fictional world a tragedy that's similar to the real world.This novel takes a different approach. (view spoiler)[There is a terrorist attack during Arthur's time as mayor, but it involves bombs rather than planes, and the organiser is Arnim Sandoval rather than Osama bin Laden. I think that works well: it's obviously intended as a parallel, particularly with the comment about the terrorist group originally being funded by the USA to fight the Soviets. However, it's different enough that it's not disrespectful. In particular, Arthur can fight Sandoval without undermining the real world activities of Seal Team Six. (Times have changed since we had comic covers with Captain America punching Hitler...) I also liked the way that Gwen tried to resolve the situation without perpetuating the cycle of violence. (hide spoiler)]