Foreign correspondent and former Los Angeles Times reporter Sebastian Rotella has spent decades covering cross-border crime, drug-trafficking, terrorism and Muslim sects. In 2011, he rolled all this into his first novel, Triple Crossing, an international crime thriller featuring Valentine Pescatore, a U.S. Border Patrol agent from Chicago of Mexican-Argentine-Italian descent. The Convert's Song picks up with Pescatore in Buenos Aires, where Triple Crossing ended. He is working for a local private investigator and trying to get over a love affair with his federal-agent handler from the complicated, brutal undercover operation that ended his Border Patrol career.
In what appears to be a chance meeting, Pescatore runs into his oldest childhood Chicago friend, Raymond, a silver-tongued lothario, occasional drug dealer, failed club singer and recent convert to Islam. When a terrorist attack on a Buenos Aires mall kills 200, a warning phone message from Raymond launches Pescatore into a manhunt for those responsible. He joins the attractive French intelligence agent Fatima Belhaj on a trail that runs through Bolivia, Paris, Spain and finally ends in Baghdad, where he confronts a ruthless Iranian brigadier general in a meeting brokered by Raymond.
His cover blown by Iranian Intelligence, Raymond tells Pescatore his backup plan: "As long as you got something or someone to offer, you can always convert." With an investigative journalist's insider knowledge and a thriller writer's pace, The Convert's Song is a convoluted trip through the world of terrorist cells fueled by drug money and extremism--and the most dangerous player is often any convert who works only for himself. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.