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February 22, 2006
Book review: Prayers for the Assassin
I can spend hours in a bookstore. It rivals a bakery or candy shop. Sometimes I don't get hours but just pop in and I go pretty much on whim.
Early Sunday I had all of about 20 minutes and wandered looking at the new fiction -- picking up books at random, reading a paragraph here, flyleaf there. Robert Ferrigno's Prayers for the Assassin actually intrigued me with an illustration on the inside cover. Taking it home, I settled down to read...and read... until I finished it on Monday.
It is a fast-paced political thriller that reads like a movie (not surprising that several of Mr. Ferrigno's prior novels have been optioned by Hollywood). More like Crichton than Clancey. The characters are well-written -- a brooding hero, headstrong heroine and a really well done psycho-killer-assassin villain. Ferrigno also gives life to his cast of periphery characters so none seem a cipher or merely a prop to move the story along.
What sets this book apart is the setting Ferrigno drops these characters into -- the year 2042 in the Islamic Republic of America.
Don't snort because he really makes it work. Ferrigno has a deft touch with getting us to suspend disbelief about this alternative future while not getting bogged down in endless exposition on how it took place.
The short of it: American culture had been very secularized, Islam was becoming popular, a major celebrity made a sensation by publicly embracing her new faith at the Oscars stirring even more interest, then in 2015 three suitcase bombs go off...one destroying Washington, DC, one destroying New York and one irradiating Mecca. The FBI captures and gets confessions out of people who claim to be members of the Mossad and the world goes nuts.
The dust settles, China is the only world superpower. America is fragmented with the Islamic republic about 2/3 of the old USA, a separate nation, The Bible Belt, holds on to southern states and a few other twists on the landscape.
This is the setting for the story of convergent political forces and when the heroine, Sarah, a historian, who has already raised the wrath of the fundamentalist moslems with her history of the culture at the time of The Zionist Betrayl, comes across some devestating information that said Betrayl might not be what everyone accepts as historical fact.
Ferrigan writes places very well, and one part of the book is in So. Cal - and there is a strange dislocation to see the familiar wrapped in such a different cultural milieu.
Another point that goes to believability is that Sarah is a moderate/modern moslem, and the hero, Rakkim is moslem but lapsed, both are comfortable with their core faith. Just as the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant characters are with theirs. The assassin, Darwin, is sociopathic, believing in nothing but himself, and another villain, imam Ibn Azziz is consumed by his own religious fanaticism.
This book could easily have lapsed into polemic, but it is a truly intriguing and heart-pounding story where the author likes to shock and surprise with telling vignettes along the ride (wow, what San Francisco turns into!). Kind of like things that jump out at you during a Disneyland ride.
I happily recommend it.
Technorati: Book Review, Prayers for the Assassin, Robert Ferrigno
Posted by Darleen at February 22, 2006 08:24 PM
Comments
Interesting. It could happen. Christianity took just a few hundred years to grow from just a few followers to being an official state religion of the Roman Empire.People tired of paganism. Took to Christianity.
No telling today, how religious movements will end up, once they get started.
Somewhat worrisome since many inmates of American prisons tend take up Islam while in prison.
Who knows what might happen....
Posted by: Carl W. Goss at February 23, 2006 07:54 AM
Reminds me of another book called "Fatherland", which is an alternate 1960s in which Hitler won WWI.
Basically, it's Hitler's 75th Birthday Jubillee, and Pres. Kennedy is about to visit Germany for the Ceremonies. In the midst of all this, an American reporter is slowly uncovering the horrible secret of what really happened to all those Jews who were "relocated".
I must sheepishly admint that the book is sitting unread on my rather long "reading list"; but I did see the made-for-cable movie starring Rutget Hauer as an SS Officer who helps the reporter.
Posted by: Strider at February 23, 2006 07:58 AM