The Obitist

Note to Readers: If you are considering this book, thank you. While not a trilogy, it does bring my previous two books to a conclusion. Sarason Seed was not an easy character to explore, and his demise in this final installment (not a spoiler) was necessary to relieve me of his presence and the characters he fooled while he was alive. He was the nicest not-nice man I have ever constructed. The book is broken into three parts: how he dies, the atonement his acquaintances are offered by the emissaries of The Obitist, and the actual discussion Sarason has with this figure.

The entire book takes place over several hours.

The premise for the story hinges on truth and choices. 

Sarason Seed has a murderous past he has unwittingly hidden for forty years. He does not recall the events that would rupture a normal person's life. In the meantime, his great wealth has provided him with privacy, a retreat from the man he suspects he is but refuses to face. As Kierkegaard once suggested, while Sarason could attempt to understand his past, he does not recognize what it is and, as a result, exists in a future that is without a serious commitment. Freed from the business activities he has delegated to his wife, he pursues His philanthropic work. 

The opening section finds him in Africa on a private plane attacked by the missile fire of a nervous, somewhat youthful soldier. As his wife scrambles to find out what happened, we learn his death cannot be officially confirmed until the body is found. While various factions, both good and bad, race toward the wreckage, The Obitist dispatches his Bridgers to discover why the people he encountered never turned him into the authorities. 

The conversations the Bridgers have with these people take place in the second part of the book. Offered as a series of interviews, these apparitional figures need to determine why the people who knew Sarason was a serial killer never came forward.

In the final part of the book, we meet the newly deceased Sarason as he navigates his interview with The Obitist. Since man began burying the dead, the recording of death was the privilege of the elite. With the advent of the printing press, the nature of the obituary changed, allowing a commoner's life to be recorded for posterity. However, this created problems for survivors and ancestors who wanted the document to be authentic.

The Obitist has since been called in to make a historic determination in the most challenging cases. The Obitist needed to set the record straight. Only the interviewer assigned to the job has been recently promoted against his wishes and is somewhat disgruntled.