The Absolution
Jonathan Leverkin is a struggling writer who supplements his meager income by ghostwriting for a fellow classmate in his writing class, Cory Tannen, a lazy, trust-fund baby, who enjoys the economic power he has over him. One night, fed up with Cory’s treatment, Jon types in his name, rather than Cory’s, on a submission for a short story contest, and then mails it off. Unbeknownst to him, dark forces are unleashed...
3 years, and 2 successful crime novels later, Jon is rich and famous, living on 5th Avenue, in Manhattan. As he struggles to finish his most ambitious novel yet, entitled “The Proxy”, Jon’s woken by a disturbing dream. Staring at a peculiar tattoo on the back of the latest girl he’s sleeping with, Jon sees frightening images from his birthday party, 3 years ago, and becomes obsessed with trying to recover the lost memory of that night. Something happened that night, which changed his life forever.
Unsettled, Jon goes to a party and meets Susan Akers, an editor recommended by his publisher, to edit his new novel. While there, he sees a newspaper headline, Muslim Cleric murdered in Brooklyn Mosque, and freaks. It’s identical to an incident in his new novel, which no one else has read. As he investigates, Jon is plunged into an escalating series of events in which it becomes clear that the events in his book are being played out in real life, with potential catastrophic consequences to the social order.
Getting in deeper, he begins to realize that the lost memories of his 27th birthday are somehow linked to the prophetic events in his unpublished novel, and in trying to discover the truth, finds the net tightening around him. His only way out is to find out the truth about that night, 3 years ago, and when he finally does, he learns, to his horror, that he’s unknowingly been a part of a chilling conspiracy to undermine the authority of all organized religion. Now Jon has to make a decision: will he become a part of the conspiracy, or will he lose everything, including his freedom?