Political Thriller – nigeladamsbookworm

If you’ve missed the type of book that Robert Ludlum wrote back in the 70s and 80s, or some of the early Tom Clancy novels, then this book set firmly in the modern day is definitely for you.

Hunted is set against the backdrop of an imminent American Presidential Election, very thinly disguised and based on Trump v Harris, and hints that one of them, or at the least their supporters, are trying to sway the election by setting up terrorist attacks on US soil.

Young vulnerable Asian women are being groomed to join a US Terror Cell, but they are not being told the truth about the severity of there actions, or the cause they are fighting for.

Somebody wants to make it look as though there is a Muslim Terror Cell working in America.

After an explosion in a Mall FBI Agent Shreya Mistry manages to see CCTV footage of the alleged attacker, but she looks like she’s running away, not planting a bomb.

Mistry has difficulty getting her bosses to agree with her and finds herself increasingly distanced from the investigation.

Meanwhile and American mother goes to the U.K. to find the family of another Asian girl who is believed to be part of the cell. The mother’s white and is convinced her son is also part of the cell, but knows he can’t be acting out of principles the American Government Agencies, and the press, are attributing to the cell.

She convinces the father to go to the States with her to find their children before the FBI does, because she’s afraid they won’t be listened to fairly, if at all.

The title the hunted come onto play here. The mismatched couple are hunting their children. The FBI are hunting the cell, and also the mother and father team who they now think are also terrorists.

So, who is the puppeteer grooming and guiding the would be activists into terrorism.

And what s their ultimate goal.

I loved this book. It took me right back to the books that hooked me as a young adult. This sits nicely alongside Ludlum, Clancy, and DeMille as a brilliantly tense terrorism novel.

Hopefully there will be a follow up. It doesn’t exactly end on a cliffhanger, but there is scope for another book.

Pages: 468. Publisher: Vintage Audiobook length: 13 hours 21. Narrator: Mikhail Sen

A great story well written.

Gill Peck is the BBC Financial corespondent that everybody sees on the news talking about stock markets, banking trends, and interest rates.

What he isn’t is a criminalist, or crime reporter.

When he is given a tip off that one of Britain’s leading banks is about to go broke, he breaks the news, and gets the blame for braking the bank.

A long time friend, and lover, working for the Bank of England commits suicide when the news breaks.

What Peck hadn’t accounted for was the things happening in the background.

Why was this bank targeted, and by who, because it soon becomes obvious that this is not the only one in trouble. This just happened to be the one somebody wanted to drastically devalue.

Peck is soon embroiled in an investigation into what happened to the bank, and more importantly to him, why his lover died.

This is a book that I’ll admit I nearly put down on several occasions.

It can be a bit rambling in places, and I got the impression the author was just using it as a vehicle to let the reader know about some of the privileged places he’d visited in the course of his work.

But the more I read the more engrossed I got in the story.

Peck himself is not the most engaging, or likeable character, but neither is he gross, or boring.

It’s the story that hooked me. There are things in this book I knew nothing about, or had a very basic knowledge of. The usual trip to Google led me down the usual rabbit holes, and like with all good books I learned things.

The more I learned the more feasible the story became.

The more feasible it became the more thrilling it got.

In fact, by the time I did finish it, I’d place it amongst the best modern, political thrillers I’ve read.

Publisher: Zaffre. Pages: 395. Audiobook length: 12 hours 19 minutes. Narrator: Matt Addis