Hunted by Abir Mukherjee

Abir Mukherjee is best known for his five volume historical crime Wyndham and Banerjee series set in India in the 1920s. His new novel Hunted is a complete change of pace. A day-after-tomorrow (or even possibly day-after-today) thriller set in the United States featuring terrorists, politics and the FBI, but also a couple of parents who just want to save their children who have become enmeshed in the violence.

Hunted opens with the bombing of a shopping mall in Los Angeles. It is five days before the American elections and the Trumpian candidate Costa is trailing in the polls to his rival the female vice-president Greenwood. This event starts to impact the polling. Reckless but intuitive FBI agent Shreya Mistry knows there is more to the bombing than meets the eye and despite being ordered to return to the San Diego field office takes herself to Portland where the young female bomber was last seen. Meanwhile in the UK, after being roughed up and questioned by the police Sajid Khan and his wife get a visit from a woman called Carrie who claims that their daughter Aliyah is caught up in the plot as is her son Greg. She convinces Greg to sneak into the US to try and find and save their children. The closer all of these characters get to the truth the more they realise that things are not quite what they seem.

Hunted is pretty standard American thriller fare of the type that we have seen recently from writers like Matthew Quirk, Chris Hauty, David Baldacci and Mike Lawson. Tropes include terrorism being used a lever for other ends, a conspiracy that might go all the way to the top, one plucky agent who keeps having to ignore orders to get to the truth, and of course a ticking clock (or more than one). But Mukherjee deploys all of these elements well and adds an element of nuance in his consideration of what makes a terrorist and how young people can be manipulated by ideologues of all stripes. And his wildcard is the introduction of the parents into the mix which adds both an amateur lens and some emotional depth, even while it makes not a lick of sense.

If Hunted succeeds it is because of this heart and that the plot moves fast enough for readers not to ask too many questions. The final act, in particular, requires so many things to have coincidentally worked and for various characters to deliberately not know things that they otherwise should have known or revealed that it is not worth thinking about. But Mukherjee delivers engaging characters and writes in a propulsive enough style that it is easy to turn the pages and go with the vibe rather than thinking about the logic.

Hunted by Abir Mukherjee

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6.0/10