East of Hounslow

What a very interesting read! Javid ("call me Jay!") Qasim is a Paki (by his own words) just living his life as a low level drug dealer, trying to make ends meet and pay for his new BMW. He catches the eye of MI-5, the British Secret Service, and is coopted in their world, in order to see what might be going on with a Muslim terrorist cell. While he rebels against the stereotype, he does find it a bit thrilling to be involved and wants to shatter that stereotype by exposing the violent extremists.

I found the character of Jay Qasim, and the world he inhabited, both enlightening and scary. Rahman really hammered home his frustration as just wanting to be a regular guy, yet wanting to be a part of his Muslim heritage. He tries to straddle both worlds, sometimes to good effect and sometimes entirely incorrectly. He really was a laze about who grew quite a bit as the book went on.

I enjoyed both his self deprecating humor and his equally impassioned defense of his heritage. It was a fresh take on a tired genre and quite fun (and funny) to boot. I wondered just how Rahman was going to tie everything up, but as has often happened recently in the books I have been reading, he did not take the easy way out and it ended with a bang.

As it is the first in the Qasim series, I wonder where he will go with it. There were a couple loose ends that need to be tied up, but his career as an MI-5 agent seems to be over. I do wish him well and can't wait to see where he ends up.

Interesting book, and quite pacey. A Muslim man in Britain is living with his mum, dealing drugs for a nasty fella who he gets on with because he's a reliable employee who brings the cash on time, and generally having a simple and comfortable life without much bother. But then his mum moves away with a new boyfriend, he finds out a friend he has generally felt sorry for is getting caught up in meetings with extremists (also attended by a very attractive young woman) and before long he's recruited by MI5 to blend in and try to find the man behind the movement. It's funny and suspenseful and does a fair job of both illustrating how radicalization can happen and how it's completely contrary to Muslim teaching without being heavy-handed in its polemics. I'm not at all sure how this can be the start of a series, but it's quite good for a debut that takes some risks. I really enjoyed the narrative voice of the main character.