"Homegrown Hero" by Khurrum Rahman

This is a gritty thriller set principally in Hounslow, West London. Javid Qasim ('Jay') is the son of an Afghan terrorist leader in hiding who has become an MI5 agent and has foiled a terrorist plot to machine gun Oxford Street shoppers; as a result a fatwa has been issued against him. The fatwa is to be carried out by a 'sleeper' terrorist, Imran Siddiqi (Imy), who has fallen in love with white girl Stephanie and her young son Jack and so doesn't want to be reactivated; he and his new family are being threatened by the terrorist organisation is he does not kill Jay. Throw in a side plot involving young boys being recruited by a white supremacist organisation and including suicide by hanging, acid bombs and throat slitting (that's the hook in the prologue) and we have the ingredients for an action-packed thriller.

I enjoyed the humdrum setting of this story which involved double-decker buses, an IT call centre, community centres and a chase through Debenhams department store. I enjoyed the humorous start in which Imy is unable to extract information from Jack. I found the level of violence disturbing and even more disturbing was the bleak outlook: it seemed that everyone had to take sides in an endless vendetta of revenge attack provoking revenge attack.

Told in multiple voices, principally those of Jay and Imy but also that of Daniel, each chapter introduced with the name of the narrator.

Some good lines:

• "'I've told you.' Jack glanced outside the window at the buses lit up within Hounslow Bus Garage. 'I'm not telling you'." (C 1) Cheerfully oxymoronic.
• "I zombied in there five days a week and spent my time sitting on a chair that stopped twirling around the same time as Fred and Ginger." (C 2)
• "Nobody goes to Slough; it makes Hounslow look like Venice." (C 20)

My wonderful wife bought me a subscription to Books and Beer; each month I receive a crime book and some cans of beer. The other titles I have received so far are:

• Most Wanted by Robert Craik: a fast-paced thriller set in California
• The Devil's Dice by Roz Watkins: a whodunnit set in the English Peak District
• Only Killers and Thieves by Paul Howarth: a stunning tale of crime and revenge, of temptation and sin, of evil and redemption set in 1880s Queensland and as gritty as only the Australian Outback can get.
• Snap by Belinda Bauer: a brilliant story about a young lad who, having become a burglar in order to survive, discovers his mother's killer.
• Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic: a murder mystery set in Australia in which the PI is deaf
• The Mongolian Conspiracy by Rafael Bernal: classic Chandleresque Mexican noir
• The Closer I Get, a thriller in which an author is stalked by an obsessive fan.

August 2019; 390 pages