Fact and fiction often merge when journalists also write thrillers.

Sebastian Rotella has woven reality into his two excellent novels, The Convert’s Song, which came out December 2014, and his 2011 debut Triple Crossing.

As a journalist, Rotella specializes in covering national security and terrorism. His reporting about Muslims in Europe was chosen as a Pulitzer finalist.

He also wrote about the Paris cell to which the Kouachi brothers who committed the murders at Charlie Hebdo belonged.

The Kouachi brothers were from the 19th arrondissement and trained in the Buttes-Chaumont park, where a scene takes place in The Convert’s Song (Little, Brown).

Recently, Rotella published a piece on ProPublica on Argentine conspiracies and Alberto Nisman, the Argentine special prosecutor whose mysterious death has made international headlines and left Argentina in turmoil.

Nisman was investigating a terrorist bombing that killed 85 people at a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994.

Rotella’s The Convert’s Song looks at that merging of organized crime, Islamic terrorism, law enforcement, and intelligence services. The Convert’s Song explores the psychology and motivations of Islamic extremists and counterterror warriors.

In The Convert’s Song, Rotella sets private investigator Valentine Pescatore on a dangerous new journey—from Buenos Aires to the jungles of South America, from Paris to Baghdad. Pescatore must capture a deadly international terrorist, who just may be his closest childhood friend, before he strikes again. 

Pescatore’s friend, a charming, failed musician who has converted to Islam, is suspected of an attack on a shopping mall. But is he really the suspect…a spy…or just a scam artist?

Rotella will discuss his work at 6:30 p.m., February 20, at the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City.