Publishers Weekly
05/25/2020
By turns amusing and harrowing, Rahman’s debut and series launch introduces small-time dope dealer Javid “Jay” Qasim, a British-born Muslim in his late 20s who lives with his mother in the London borough of Hounslow. After vandals attack the mosque where Jay goes every Friday, he joins the effort to strike back at the perpetrators. He winds up getting a beating, and his car, which contains drugs and the money he owes his supplier, Silas Drakos, is stolen. Jay must make restitution or face the consequences. At this low ebb, a stranger recruits him to work for MI5, and he agrees to share what he knows about Drakos’s operation and to infiltrate a cell of radical Muslims. The stakes rise after Jay goes to Pakistan for terrorist training. Rahman does a good job portraying conflicts within the secret services and the evolution of terrorists from regular mosque-goers to radical jihadists. Jay’s wryly witty first-person voice carries the action along to the shocking, cliff-hanger finale. Readers will wonder what’s next for Jay. (July)
From the Publisher
‘Educated me about some of the most urgent issues of our time while making me repeatedly snort with laughter’. Telegraph
‘Combining humour and tragedy is one of the hardest literary challenges, but Khurrum Rahman succeeds.’ TLS
‘Told with striking panache. Announces the arrival of a fine, fresh new thriller writer’ Daily Mail
‘A very funny but tense thriller…Think Four Lions meets Phone Shop’ Red
‘As much a coming-of-age story as a full-on action thriller, East of Hounslow is thought-provoking and entirely gripping.’ Guardian
‘Sweary, funny and, above all, an absolutely cracking thriller that you’ll tear through, this is the anti-James Bond that the 21st century needs’ Emerald Street
'East of Hounslow, in which a young Muslim finds himself forced to become an MI5 plant in a group of jihadists, is as British as Nelson’s Colum. A superb and exciting debut novel' Telegraph
‘Clipped dialogues, staccato sentences and the hilariously brilliant prose set the pace of this excellent unputdownable crime thriller. The climax will leave you breathless.’ New Indian Express
‘A brilliant thriller. You’d be mad not to buy this.’Ben Aaronovitch, author of Rivers of London
‘Excellent book. Phenomenal writing.’ BA Paris, author of Behind Closed Doors
‘I loved it. More please’ Mel McGrath, author of Give Me the Child
‘Builds to a heart-constricting climax’ Times Crime Club
‘The best thriller I’ve read in ages’ Stephen Leather
