HUNTED

Terrorism in America as imagined by a British Indian crime writer.

Eight days before the end of a toxic presidential campaign that’s “resting on a knife edge,” terrorists blow up a mall in Burbank, California. Sixty-five people die in the carnage, including a woman seen running away from the rucksack holding the bomb. FBI Special Agent Shreya Mistry wonders who the culprit is. Several candidates come to mind, like the “American Redemption fanatics, looking to bomb America back to greatness.” Then fingerprints identify the dead woman as Yasmin Malik, a British Muslim. “Why was she running?” Mistry wonders. “The question surfaced unbidden...a cork bobbing in the maelstrom of her mind.” The hunt is on for the perpetrators, and eyes are on innocent men like Sajid Khan. Was he “just another treacherous Muslim? Guilty until proven innocent”? But it’s more complicated. The bad guys follow the much-feared leader Miriam, a “soldier masquerading as messiah….Amish with a hint of assault rifle.” Some of them are former U.S. military like Greg, who nurses a lingering leg wound from combat and whose neck is tattooed with barbed wire and a swastika. Meanwhile, Mistry has personal baggage and professional problems. The agent hasn’t seen her daughter in months, and her FBI bosses don’t like how she operates—she isn’t called “Shreya Misfit” for nothing. And as befits a feisty hero, her suspension by the FBI doesn’t stop her as she tries to avert another horrific attack. As the constant action unfolds, the terrorists always seem to stay a step ahead of the FBI—it’s almost as if the bad guys have a mole inside the agency. Of the many good lines in the story, “hatred didn’t do nuance” may be the most apt.

This novel will make you shudder. It’s taut, credible, and scary.