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PRAYERS FOR THE ASSASSIN is a brilliantly told story that's part thriller, part speculative fiction, part allegory, and part cautionary tale. I can say with some certainty that you will be hard-pressed to read a better novel this year, if for no other reason --- and, indeed, there are many reasons --- than the way that Robert Ferrigno has developed this future history down to its last and most minute nuance.
Actually, I might have erred in calling this a future history. As I write this, there are radical Islamic followers rioting in Europe over the printing of cartoon images of Mohammed. The unrest has been going on for weeks with no end in sight. Moderates are calling for calm and the end of civil unrest. The disturbances roil outward, turning back in on themselves, gaining fresh energy and causing further combustion. The opening chapter of PRAYERS FOR THE ASSASSIN (following a short prelude) takes place at the Super Bowl, where black-robed clerics keep fundamentalist Muslims --- particularly the women --- with impunity. And when does this book take place? 2041 --- just thirty-five years from now.
So what has happened? What has come to be known as The Zionist Betrayal occurs in the year 2015. Ostensibly a terrorist attack on American cities carried out by renegade members of the Israeli Mossad, it triggers a second American civil war. When the dust settles and the smoke clears, most of the United States is a (somewhat) benevolent Islamic republic that engages in an uneasy and unofficial war skirmish with the Bible Belt states, which have broken away and become a separate Christian nation.
PRAYERS FOR THE ASSASSIN views this world primarily through the alternate eyes of Rakkim Epps, a former Muslim warrior, and Sarah Dougan, a historian out of favor with the ruling elite. She also happens to be Rakkim's lover. When Dougan disappears, Rakkim is dispatched to find her, only to learn that Dougan is running for her life because of her shocking discovery: the Zionist Betrayal was not carried out by Israel after all, but was rather the work of a radical Muslim cleric. That cleric has now called on Darwin, an assassin without peer, to dispatch Dougan in order to prevent her from revealing to the world what she has learned. Rakkim, in order to protect Dougan, must now hunt Darwin, the hunter --- a man who is every bit Rakkim's equal, and more.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the brilliance of this book. Ferrigno, always a competent writer, has really hit his stride with his past three novels, including the Shamus-nominated THE WAKE-UP. That having been said, PRAYERS FOR THE ASSASSIN is topically and qualitatively beyond anything he has ever written. This is a stellar, penultimate work that is suspenseful, thoughtful, and ultimately chilling. Highest possible recommendation.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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