Prayers for the Assassin [Paperback]

Ripped from its roots after Washington and New York are vaporized, leaving 20 million dead…Discovering that Israel did it to blame Islamist terrorists, erroneously hoping the US would bomb the Arab world into an oil slick… A majority of the population seeking renewal in an Americanized Islam…Then fighting a civil war that split the United States between a roiling but mostly middle-of-the-road Islamic Republic and its smaller holdout rump—The Bible Belt—a throwback to the poor postwar South. Only Nevada survives as the neutral Switzerland/Pleasure Island where deals get done and appetites are sated.

In other words, what America might look like if the terrorists win.

If you question the plausibility of that scenario, go back to the “Read All Reviews” option and see Ferrigno’s “From the Author” tale of how he came to write the book.

Mr. Ferrigno is, first of all, a deeply engaging writer. I’ve enjoyed his California noir thrillers for years. He has also dug deeply into his subject matter and hit paydirt. Prayers for the Assassin is his breakout thriller—a sweeping, inventive potboiler in the tradition of Harris’ Fatherland, but with the greater immediacy of a future that begs contemplation.

The canvas of a Islamic America unfolds from the Superbowl 2040 stadium on page one, with all-male cheerleaders, prayers at half-time, and players with faces bloodied from playing without face masks.

Plenty of cheap gas now in the USA now, with oil wells pumping off the coasts, blackening what were once beaches. But there’s also a power struggle between moderate Moderns and officious, sadistic Black Robes with authority over those fundamentalists who accept sharia, glowering and whipping chador-clad women at the slightest hint of offense. The Islamist sector has already taken its toll on modernity. Satellites veer off course because nobody’s left with the scientific knowledge to guide them. Weather reports can only be guessed at. Computer systems and power grids routinely go down and are never really fixed.

This America has Seattle as its capitol with the aircraft carrier Osama bin Laden patrolling offshore. The new cultural symbols—which boast Jihad Cola and designer chadors—favor images of death. The Space Needle remains wrecked on the ground, now a war museum. The tail of a Boeing 777 aircraft juts out of Puget Sound as a reminder that Brazilian terrorists tried to strike the capitol with it…

Or did they?

In the Islamic States of America, taqiyya, or lying to protect Islam, is a way of life. As usual, this becomes lying to protect those who have political power or want it. The glue that holds the Republic together, belief that Israel was responsible for the American holocaust, is itself a lie, engineered by a diabolical schemer in a Saville Row suit called the Old One. His goal is to displace the fragile moderate government with himself as the fabled descendent of Mohammed who will save the world by Islamicizing it.

But a politically-incorrect professor, Sarah Dougan, doubts this bedrock lie of the Republic. As a controversial author, she has gotten in bad for questioning authority before. Now she’s hot on the trail of proof that the “Zionist” decimation of the old US was a hoax. Israel was framed to manipulate the American people. With its convincing touches of also flattening Mecca and the ironclad “confessions” of the Israeli terrorists, the hoax was accepted as easily as worldwide Muslim notions (and a best selling book in France) claiming that 9/11 was engineered by the CIA and no Jews were in the Twin Towers that day because they were warned to stay home.

Then Sarah Dougan vanishes. Her father Redbeard, moderate head of Internal Security, calls upon his estranged protégé-- a Fedayeen warrior--to find her.

Enter Rakkim Epps. The future Fedayeen are the ultimate warriors, a cross between elite Special Forces and superbly disciplined martial-art monks armed with lethal cutlery. They were the heroes of the Civil War—one Fedayeen equal to many ordinary soldiers. Rakkim belongs to the pinnacle of this elite—infiltrators who penetrate enemy territory. None are expected to survive. But he has retired with honor, thanks to a highly developed sense of reality, which also translates into a brooding cynicism over the state of the Republic.

Both Epps and Sarah are pursued by another Fedayeen cunningly named Darwin, spectacularly adapted by his psychopathy to be a pure assassin, trained even better than Rakkim in this skill, and in the employ of the Old One. Killing is what he does and all he does. He is, as was once said of bin Laden, a “worthy opponent.” The sparks and body count fly immediately, building to a smashing finale.

To give away more would be detract from a satisfying, twisty storyline. Suffice to say that Rakkim, Sarah and Darwin all benefit from an empathic author at the top of his skills. The entertainment value of Prayers is high and the thought-piece aspect compelling.

Themes from the ongoing Clash of Civilizations narrative --of sacrificing freedom for security, of faith trumping science, of Islamist self-righteousness vs a Western democracy whose faith is diluted by self-criticism--all resonate without flying in your face.

Bloggers in the US are having a field day with this book. Its depictions of a post-Apocalyptic Muslim America, of course, are heady tonic to some and offensive to others. (Publishers Weekly, the US trade-magazine sniffed at Ferrigno’s Muslim America as “cartoonish” –an unintended prophecy of the real-life firestorm to come.

But Prayers is hardly an anti-Islamic screed. The Muslim characters are textured and varied. The Islamic States of America is no totalitarian Islamist state like Afghanistan under the Taliban, but a well-researched and reasoned facsimile of what a Muslim US would be—fractious, well-meaning, trying to find a moderate ground but pulled to extremes by the most zealous and self-interested.

The interesting question arises, is the United States really the likeliest first battleground for Islamists and Westerners pressed uncomfortably together in a liberal culture riddled with self-doubt?

I’m hoping for a sequel that explores the Islamic future of Europe…and the UK.