HINASA

This is a story about two dedicated police Indian Police Officers who eventually - reluctantly - fall in love. Rafeeta is assigned to the Women's Justice Center, where she presides over dreadful claims presented by abused wives and daughters. Atanu is a Detective who has been hand-picked to close a stack of death investigations all regarding not entirely sympathetic victims. Atanu tries to put his feelings for Rafeeta out of his mind while he doggedly works through these cases, but can't - because she and her supernatural power's handiwork are connected to each one of them.

HINASA is an adult contemporary fantasy set in modern-day India, where an old-school, young Detective and a Community Service Officer work to fight crime with a supernatural power weaving through a series of of open death investigations that ultimately threatens to pull their intimate, personal relationship apart. Detective Atanu and Officer Rafeeta are linked to these cases– but don't yet know it. Through their professional lives as proponents of justice, helping those in need, the Power of Hinasa, finds its way into those cases, which include a sexual offender, scheming lawyer, on-the-take professional athlete and corrupt police officer. As Atanu and Rafeeta draw personally closer, so does the prominence of Hinasa. Assigned to a pile of cases displaying questionable, violent ends for all sorts of wrongdoers, Atanu is ordered to the operose task of sorting out these unsettling, odd mysteries. But after digging, dissecting then piecing them together, how far is he willing to go in the name of justice when Rafeeta is connected to everyone of these gruesome crimes? Meanwhile, Rafeeta finds herself, in the name of justice, a troubled vessel for Hinasa's fiercely debilitating, yet righteous power. HINASA is founded on over 30 years of my criminal law practice – both as a Prosecutor and Defense Attorney - in Chicagoland Courthouses, my service as a firefighter/paramedic where I live and was sparked by a World View documentary focussed on a suburban, community-based Women's Justice Center in India that filmed the harsh reality of the harrowing claims abused women who were determined to present them and the forum, presided over by a Community Service Officer, who gave them save passage to do so. Interlacing these experiences, this novel explores the burdens and blessings behind my callings, the gray zone of justice and, undeniably, a quote from the 'Not Guilty' ruling rendered by the seasoned Judge who presided over the very first murder trial I prosecuted: "You may have proven your case, but some people need a little killing."

Franco Minasian is a Husband, Father, Criminal Law Attorney, Paramedic, Musician, Author, Lecturer, Tradesman, Traveler, Tennis and Judo Player.