Island of the Assassin

About the Book

Island of the Assassin is about two kinds of silence in conflict. A covert killer, Kai Landrie, contracted by the CIA to target Islamic terrorists, develops moral scruples. He shares his doubts in confession with Peter Quince, a priest, who gets renditioned for receiving classified information. The result: two unconditional secrecies—sacred and profane—tragically collide.

About the Author

Joseph Roccasalvo followed his graduate degrees in philosophy, English literature, and theology by a Harvard PhD in comparative religion with a specialty in Buddhism. He has lived and taught in Boston, Bangkok, Chicago, and New York. For over ten years, he was associate professor at Chicago’s Loyola University and Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus and visiting professor at Columbia University in New York and Franklin University in Switzerland. Now engaged in graduate-school mentoring, he is also a fiction writer. He published five novels: Fire in a Windless Place, Chartreuse, Portrait of a Woman, The Odor of Sanctity, and The Devil’s Interval. Two novellas, Beyond the Pale and The Powers That Be, appeared as Double Entendre. There followed three books of short stories: Outward Signs, The Mansions of Limbo, and Triple Sec, then a play, Waging Waugh, and a memoir, As It Were. All are available on Amazon, including his rhymed version of Jesus’s life, published as Gospel Limerick. He has guided students in journalism and international studies at the New School for Social Research and contributed essays to the newspaper’s online column, A Word to the Wise. Forthcoming are two new books: Island of the Assassin and Twists of Faith.