Robert Ferrigno Prayers for the Assassin

Prayers for the Assassin

Robert Ferrigno

Scribner, Fen 2006, $24.95, 416 pp

ISBN 0743272897

In 2015 suitcases containing nuclear bombs destroy New York City, Washington, D.C., and Mecca. The assumption because of the inclusion of Mecca is that Israelis with Christian help committed the atrocities. The United States split apart following the terrorist atrocities with some states converting to Islam forming the Islamic Republic while others created a Christian republic.

Twenty-five years later, a power struggle exists in the Islamic Republic. Redbeard leads the moderate State Security forces; the fundamentalists forge the Black Robes police force; and finally the Old One heads the top-secret Assassins. Redbeard's niece, historian Sarah Dougan investigates the infamous attack of 2015 for her planned new book, The Zionist Betrayal. The Old One, knowing the truth must never be revealed, sends his deadliest assassin to kill her. Fleeing from the Pacific northwest towards Vegas, Sarah's only hope to survive long enough to tell the truth is her lover, former Fedayeen soldier Rakkim Epps; he expect to die for her.

The tale is very exciting building from a theory that Zionists caused the 9/11 debacle. However, readers will have to first overcome the concept that much of America adopted Islam as the official state religion. Still PRAYERS FOR ASSASSIN is fun, fast-paced in a cat and mouse way and grips readers who wonder whether Sarah will survive long enough the reveal what she knows about high school undergraduates in 2015 and the Old One.

Harriet Klausner