No Absolution

Rap Sheet contributor Anthony Rainone, who two years ago reviewed Seattle-area novelist Robert Ferrigno’s first speculative crime thriller, Prayers for the Assassin, now tackles its sequel with equal relish. As Rainone outlines the story today in January Magazine:

Three years have now passed in the Islamic States of America, since it was first introduced to readers in Prayers for the Assassin (2006), Book One of Robert Ferrigno’s Assassin Trilogy. In the sequel, Sins of the Assassin, things are looking decidedly gloomy. For starters, former Fedayeen shadow warrior Rakkim Epps, the single most important agent carrying out covert operations on behalf of President Damon Kingsley, doesn’t feel like his old self. Raising no less concern, Rakkim has spotted the Black Robe strangler Tariq-al Faisal in Seattle’s Zone (“officially called the Christian Quarter, a thirty-or-forty-block section of the city where nightclubs and coffeehouses flourished, where cybergame parlors and movie theatres operated largely free of censorship”), and he is displaying suspicious activity that can only mean ill-doings aimed at the Islamic Republic. And most critically, recent activity in the Bible Belt (the old Southern Confederacy) indicates imminent danger from the likes of Colonel Zachary Smitts, a Catholic enemy. With this blockbuster beginning, Ferrigno’s readers should buckle in for an exhilarating ride of thriller proportions, with high stakes: the continuation or demise of the American Muslim nation.

You can find the full skinny on Sins here.