Blurb
Would you surrender your secrets to save a life?
London. It could be tomorrow. Amala Hackeem, lapsed Muslim tech entrepreneur and controversial comedian, dons a burqa and heads to the women’s group at the Tower Hamlets sharia community. What is she doing there?
Ella Russell, a struggling journalist leaves home in pursuit of the story of her life. Desperate for the truth, she is about to learn the true cost of the war on terror.
Millie Stephenson, a university professor and expert in radicalisation arrives at Downing Street to brief the Prime Minister and home secretary. Nervous and excited she finds herself at the centre of a nation taken hostage. And then it gets personal.
Friends since university, by the end of the day the lives of all three women are changed forever. They will discover if friendship truly can survive secrets and fear.
My Review
Thanks to the author, publisher and blog tour organiser for sending me a copy of this book.
Trigger Warning: there is torture in the book, and terrorist acts.
Amala, Ella and Millie have been friends for twenty years, meeting at university in Edinburgh but now living in London. Millie’s husband is Amala’s business partner. Ella met her husband while they were all in the US. They’re sisters, best friends and would do anything for each other. Life has been kind, providencial. They’re all doing what they want, are wealthy and influential.
But all is not right with the world. Aafa, Amala’s brother keeps being picked up and detained. Millie is working on a couple of seriously high stakes articles. Ella’s husband has been gone for four weeks with no word.
When Ella doesn’t answer her phone and Amala’s tracking device disappears, and a burkha-clad woman makes contact with the PM and Home Secretary threatening to kill a high-profile hostage, the assumption is made that it’s Amala.
Things go downhill from there as political intrigue and unethical business deals links the Prime Minister, a pompous backbencher and the terrorist at the heart of the plot.
I got really into this book right from the start, and then had to put the breaks on because I had anticipatory anxiety about the main character. I knew something bad was going to happen, and that there would be nastiness happening to other innocent characters. It was more than I could take, so I had a day’s break and did some gardening and DIY.
After my day off I read the remaining 254 pages in 4 hours. I was gripped. And a little bit broken by the end. Last five pages were read through tears. The dogs were most confused.
I found the use of the ‘diary’ structure and countdown very effective for building tension. The characters are interesting and the near future setting is disconcertingly realistic. The added twists of misdirection and political intrigue held me enthralled. The author explores important, if painful, ideas that we really need to think about as a society. How much crap are we prepared to put up with from politicians? How many of our civil liberties are we prepared to sacrifice for nebulous safety? When will we examine our actions as a nation and the reactions of others to those actions, without trying to shift blame?
The author has clearly done a lot of research into Islam itself and Islamist ideology and terrorism, the reaction to and against European and American actions in the Middle-East, and terrorist recruitment practices, and has looked forward speculatively, taking into account the current rise in nationalism and racism, to create a not unimaginable, rather dystopic future.
Let’s try to avoid it, shall we?
Anyway, I recommend this book highly.
And for those who think the author might have been profiling terrorists as Middle-Eastern and thus contributing to the problem, all the terrorists in this book are white, British, middle-class women. If the Fundy Christians were as organised in the UK as they are in the US, Irvine could as easily have written a novel about Christian terrorists. There are so many parallels between the fictional Sharia Communities in this novel and some of the fundamentalist and Evangelical communities in the US, for instance the separation from secular society to the point of controlling their own law and deciding who can and can’t live/visit; being controlled by religious rather than municipal authorities; and oppression of women, while brainwashing them. It’s deeply disturbing. You lot might get now why I have a serious issue with the Abrahamic religions. Too many violent nutjobs in all of them.
Author
K.H. Irvine grew up in Scotland and now lives near London. The book was her 50th birthday gift to herself, believing you are never too old to try something new. Her work has taken her to board rooms, universities and governments all over the world and has included up close and personal access to special forces. A Killing Sin is her first book. The second follows on a few years later as Britain moves to civil unrest with the rise of the far right as the personal and political become intertwined.
Twitter Handles
@UrbaneBooks
@KHIrvineAuthor
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