The Convert's Song

Starred review from October 13, 2014
Valentine Pescatore, the hero of Rotella’s excellent second thriller, left his job as a U.S. Border Patrol agent to become a PI in Buenos Aires, Argentina. There he runs into Raymond Mercer, his former best friend, whom he hasn’t heard from since they were teenagers in Chicago. A charming, failed singer, Raymond has converted to Islam, but is vague about what he does for a living. When hundreds are killed in a terrorist attack at a shopping mall near the city’s garment district, the authorities suspect that Raymond and Valentine committed the crime. To clear his name, Valentine works with French agent Fatima Belhaj to pursue Raymond across the globe, from South American jungles to Paris and Baghdad. Valentine realizes how little he knows about his former friend. Is Raymond a terrorist or an informant, a spy or a scam artist? Rotella (Triple Crossing) ratchets up the action with an absorbing look at international politics. Agent: Bonnie Nadell, Hill Nadell Literary Agency.

Sebastian Rotella is an author who skillfully narrates his own work. In Buenos Aires, private investigator Valentine Perscatore unexpectedly meets Raymond Mercer, a childhood friend he hasn't seen in decades. His delight turns to suspicion when a mall is bombed and Mercer vanishes. Rotella's gruff voice is perfect for the officials who interrogate Perscatore, convinced that he's the mastermind behind the bombing. Rotella also makes Perscatore's shock and disbelief fully believable when he learns his friend is a recent convert to Muslim jihadism. Managing French, European, Latin American, and Middle Eastern accents with seeming ease, Rotella compellingly delivers all the intrigue, and even some romance. G.D.W. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

November 1, 2014
Former Border Agent Valentine Pescatore, now working as a private investigator in Argentina following his undercover misadventures in Triple Crossing (2011), has his life thrown further into chaos following a terrorist attack in Buenos Aires.Who's responsible for the shootings and bombings at a Jewish shopping mall: al-Qaida? The Iranians? The Lebanese (and if so, the Shiites or the Sunnis)? And where is Pescatore's shady friend Raymond Mercer, a rock musician, drug dealer and informant who's converted to Islam? No sooner has Pescatore started investigating than he's mistakenly arrested and abused by police-whose police, exactly, he's not sure. Things pick up when he's teamed with a sexy French counterterrorism agent, Fatima Belhaj, especially when she takes a liking to him. They follow the terror trail back to Europe, where Pescatore learns the difference between agitation by Islamic extremists and gang riots in France-and is joined by his former boss and girlfriend from San Diego, Isabel Puente, in Spain. Rotella, who made his name as an investigative reporter, makes the far-flung complexities of geopolitical terror come alive on the page, colorfully differentiating among all the ethnic and national groups while distinguishing between the two basic types of terrorists: "furious madmen and cold mercenaries." For all its darkness and danger, the book boasts a streak of hard-boiled humor that puts it in the company of some top espionage novels. It's also an enjoyably musical book, with references ranging from Louis Prima to Astor Piazzolla to Bruce Springsteen, Rotella serves up international intrigue with a delectable twist.

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October 15, 2014
Former U.S. Border Patrol Agent Valentine Pescatore has relocated to Buenos Aires and found work as a private investigator. He's learning to love the city and trying to forget the dangerous undercover work he did on the U.S.-Mexican borderuntil a boyhood friend from Chicago, Raymond Mercer, appears. Terrorists attack a shopping center in the city, killing hundreds, and, in the immediate aftermath, Raymond and Valentine both become suspects. Raymond disappears as abruptly as he appeared, and Pescatore reluctantly suspects that his oldest friend may have planned the attack. Trying to find Raymond takes him to the jungles of Bolivia and to France, Spain, and, finally, into Iraq, often in the company of Fatima Belhaj, a beautiful French counterterrorism official. Rotella's second Valentine novel (Triple Crossing, 2011) is a propulsive thriller filled with action, vividly drawn characters, delightful insights into locales, and persuasive speculations about the stunningly complex web of alliances and enmities that aid and/or degrade the efforts of the world's terrorists and drug traffickers. And throughout the book, nearly page-by-page, is the growing sense that Rotella, a working journalist, really knows what he is writing about.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2014

Remaking his life in Buenos Aires as a private investigator after doing time in U.S. law enforcement, Valentine Pescatore encounters old buddy Raymond Mercer, who's converted to Islam. When Raymond stands accused following a particularly bloody terrorist attack, Valentine joins with seductive French agent Fatima Belhaj to discover whether Raymond is friend or foe, innocent, terrorist, or spy. Multi-award-winning journalist Rotella successfully launched his writing career with 2011's Triple Crossing, which the New York Times called its favorite debut thriller of the year.

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