Requiem for the Assassin

In Requiem for the Assassin, El Rey, the world's deadliest assassin, is called into the field to terminate a list of seemingly unrelated targets on behalf of CISEN, the Mexican Intelligence Agency. But things are never as they seem in the murky world of intrigue, and he quickly goes from being the hunter to the prey.Q&A with Russell BlakeQ: This is the sixth book in the Assassin series? RB: Depends on how you count them. If you include the prequel, Night of the Assassin, it's #6. If you start at the first book in the series and look at the prequel as sort of 1a, it's #5.Q: How is this different than the others in the series?RB: I take a little more time to set the stage, but the main thing is the approach to the story. I wanted to craft something where the reader wasn't sure what the story was really about, to mirror the characters not knowing what's actually going on even as events play out around them. That sense of disequilibrium was key to the concept - the reader discovers how everything is connected and makes sense just as the characters do. It's different than any of the prior books in the sense that we aren't really sure who the bad guys are until the denouement, whereas in the prior books it was pretty obvious up front who was good and who was bad.Q: Is there much more road for El Rey and Captain Cruz?RB: I see at least one more episode, maybe two. Depends on how the next one finishes. I do love both characters, so I'm reluctant to write the last book, but I've got no interest in dragging it out and inventing story just to pad a series. My sense is we're nearing the end, but how or when it ends, I'm not sure yet.