"Masterfully draws us into a twisting, sordid tale" - review of NOTES ON A DROWING

NOTES ON A DROWNING by Anna Sharpe (Orion, 2025)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Alex knows she risks getting fired from her law firm if she takes on another unpaid case, but when she hears Rosa's desperate voice at the other end of the phone, she knows she has to the body of Rosa's shy teenage sister, Natalia, has been dragged, lifeless, from the Thames. Alex can't help but think of her own missing little sister. She knows how a lack of answers can eat you alive.

Kat has worked hard to become Special Adviser to the Home Secretary, and is eager to finally put the dark and tragic part of her past behind her. But when she discovers a series of cover-ups, she begins to wonder whether her seemingly perfect new boss could be involved. Then she she's shocked to discover a letter that raises worrying questions about a girl found drowned in London... Natalia.

There are complex and painful reasons for Alex and Kat not to work together, but when it becomes clear that there are powerful people involved in Natalia's death, and that other girls are at risk, Alex and Kat must overcome their differences to find answers. Will they save the girls and discover the truth? Or will the high-powered players in this game stop Alex and Kat for good? 

Readers looking for a superb thriller that offers characters that’ll make you care and a propulsive narrative threaded with some very disturbing real-life issues should rush to read Notes on a Drowning, the first contemporary tale from British lawyer and author Anna Sharpe, who’s previously written several excellent historical crime and Gothic novels as Anna Mazzola.

In Notes on a Drowning, ‘Sharpe’ masterfully draws us into a twisting, sordid tale of legal intrigue, power and corruption. Already starting to fray due to workplace and personal pressures, determined lawyer Alex is roped into more pro bono work – the bane of her boss’s life, who is trying to keep the firm afloat and needs fee-paying clients. It seems a simple if frustrating request from a pal: could Anna act for the family at an inquest into the drowning in London’s famed Thames River of Natalia, a teenage immigrant from Moldova. A tragic accident fuelled by partying, alcohol and drugs, say the police and others. But resolution isn’t so simple for Natalia’s family, and soon enough the facts and official story don’t add up for Alex, either. Or is she just projecting the trauma and suspicions raised by her own younger sister’s disappearance in Japan, many years ago? A mystery still unsolved.

Past and present collide when Kat, an ambitious special advisor to the British Home Secretary who is trying to forget her own history, becomes involved after stumbling across documents with troubling information that contradicts what she’s been told. But can Alex and Kat trust each other, let alone dig into the truth behind Natalia’s drowning, when many powerful people want the case closed.

While ‘Anna Sharpe’ may be a new name to crime readers, the author has already proven herself a strong storyteller with several terrific historical and Gothic tales, and Notes on a Drowning may take her to an even higher level. It’s an excellent modern-day thriller powered by taut storytelling, several fascinating characters, lots of intrigue, fears, and tough issues. A cracking, if disturbing, tale.

[This review was first written for Deadly Pleasures magazine in the United States]

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.

A riveting read with a fascinating heroine - review of ECHO

ECHO by Tracy Clark (Thomas & Mercer, Dec 2024)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Hardwicke House, home to Belverton College’s exclusive Minotaur Society, is no stranger to tragedy. And when a body turns up in the field next to the mansion, the scene looks chillingly familiar.

Chicago PD sends hard-nosed Detective Harriet “Harri” Foster to investigate. The victim is Brice Collier, a wealthy Belverton student, whose billionaire father, Sebastian, owns Hardwicke and ranks as a major school benefactor. Sebastian also has ties to the mansion’s notorious past, when thirty years ago, hazing led to a student’s death in the very same field.

Could the deaths be connected? With no suspects or leads, Harri and her partner, Detective Vera Li, will have to dig deep to find answers. No charges were ever filed in the first case, and this time, Harri’s determined the killer must pay. But still grieving her former partner’s death, Harri must also contend with a shadowy figure called the voice—and their dangerous game of cat and mouse could threaten everything. 

Edgar and Anthony Award nominee Tracy Clark returns with a tense third instalment in her acclaimed series starring Detective Harriet ‘Harri’ Foster that raises questions about the ongoing impact of trauma and loss, and the fine line between justice and revenge. 

On a frigid February morning, two college girls discover a near-frozen body of a young man in an empty lot, leading to Harri and her Chicago PD colleagues investigating tragedies present and past at Hardwicke House, the home to Belverton College’s exclusive Minotaur Society. Matters quickly become complicated, as the victim is Brice Collier, the scion of billionaire Sebastien Collier, who owns Hardwicke House and is a major benefactor to Belverton College. An absent father, who still wields plenty of power.

What does it mean that Brice’s death looks a lot like a student hazing gone wrong, 30 years before? 

As she navigates the lies and obfuscations of many involved, Harri must also deal with a shadowy figure who taunts her about how corruption led the way to her former partner’s suicide, and seems to want to play a dangerous game that threatens to upturn Harri’s work and personal life. And with the police department refusing to further investigate her partner’s death, Harri is left frustrated. 

Dangerously ready to boil over. 

Clark crafts a very good read; a riveting tale that quickly lures you in and then has great narrative drive throughout several twists and turns, as well as plenty of substance. Harri, the only black female detective in a male-dominate police force, is an intriguing series heroine, with plenty to unpack along the way. Talented and determined, with a stubborn streak that could cause issues. 

Clark doesn’t shy away from the impact of police work on Harri and her colleagues as they face dark deeds on a daily basis. The constraints, the policies, the stresses and pressures and power plays that can derail or shackle investigations. There’s a growing ensemble feel too, as others in the squad and surrounds have key roles to play, and bring added depth rather than being mere foils for Harri. 

Overall, Echo is an excellent read in a strong series that may leave many readers, like me, wanting plenty more of Detective Harriet Foster and her colleagues and friends. Recommended.

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.

"A feminist thriller that's an intriguing sophomore novel" - review of LEAVE THE GIRLS BEHIND

LEAVE THE GIRLS BEHIND by Jacqueline Bublitz (Emily Bestler Books, 2024)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Ruth-Ann Baker is a college dropout, a bartender—and an amateur detective who just can’t stay away from true crime. Nineteen years ago, her childhood friend was murdered by suspected serial killer Ethan Oswald. Still tormented by the case, Ruth can’t help but think of the long-dead Oswald when another young girl goes missing from the same town. And when she uncovers startling new evidence that suggests Oswald did not act alone, she is determined to find his deadly partner in crime.

Embarking on a global investigation, Ruth becomes close to three very different women—one of whom might just hold the key to what happened to the missing girl. And her childhood friend, all those years ago.

Kiwi author Jacqueline Bublitz, who’s split her life between Taranaki in New Zealand and Melbourne in Australia, garnered wide acclaim for her trope-busting debut, Before You Knew My Name, a feminist literary thriller that explored the all-too-typical ‘murdered women found in a NYC park’ story we’ve often seen, especially on TV dramas, from a fresh perspective. 

That of the victim herself, and the bystander who finds the body. 

Critics and reader praise, sales, and awards flowed, including Fiction Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards, and double-ups at the crime-loving Davitt Awards in Australia and Ngaio Marsh Awards in New Zealand. Also a shortlisting for the prestigious CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel in the English language that year; Bublitz was the only female author, and only debut author, to make the shortlist. How do you follow that as a first-time effort? 

Well, now Bublitz is back with another fascinating standalone that rakes over some similar ground – true crime obsession and the wider impact of misogynistic murders – while being its own story. In Leave the Girls Behind, New York bartender Ruth-Ann Baker is on high alert after a young girl goes missing from her hometown in Connecticut. Awful memories stir of Ruth-Ann’s best friend Beth being abducted and murdered by popular music teacher Ethan Oswald almost twenty years before. Ruth-Ann always felt Oswald had more victims, but Oswald died in prison, so he couldn’t have committed this new horror. But still, it stirs Ruth-Ann’s past trauma. 

She always felt Oswald had many more victims, and perhaps an accomplice. The local police in Connecticut, along with counsellors and her parents, didn’t believe her. Especially when she told them she was certain of her beliefs because of Beth’s ghost, and the ghosts of other murdered girls who visited Ruth-Ann; looking for help, looking for justice. Could Oswald have had help? Is the current perp somehow linked to what happened many years ago? Or is it just geographic chance, compounded by voices in Ruth-Ann’s head? 

Bublitz takes readers on an at-times bewildering ride into Ruth-Ann’s life, obsessions, and trauma, as well as across the globe as Ruth-Ann decides to take action and follows tenuous leads to New Zealand and Norway, looking for links to Oswald and her ghostly girls. But is our unreliable narrator trying to help a missing girl in the present, ones from the past, or herself?

Bublitz has conjured another fascinating tale that is likely to stick with readers long after the final page. A story about the messy ripples that are cast by violence, and fear. Ongoing trauma and how that manifests. Leave the Girls Behind is not the easiest read, though Bublitz writes well and the text flows smoothly even as the story is murky. Like Australia’s famed breakfast spread, Vegemite, it may divide readers, while leaving a strong aftertaste either way. An intriguing, impressive sophomore novel. 

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.

"A character centric ride through modern America" - review of GUIDE ME HOME

GUIDE ME HOME by Attica Locke (Viper, 2024)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Texas Ranger Darren Mathews has handed in his badge. A choice made three years before, which served justice if not the law, means that he may now stand trial. And his mother - an intermittent and destructive force in his life - is the cause of his fall from grace.

And yet it is his mother's reappearance that may also be his salvation. A black girl at an all-white sorority at a nearby college is missing, her belongings tossed in a dumpster. Her sorority sisters, the college police, even the girl's own family, deny that she has disappeared, but Sera Fuller is nowhere to be found. A bloodstained shirt discovered in a woodland clearing may be the last trace of her. And Darren's mother wants her son to work the case.

Disillusioned by an America forever changed by the presidency of Donald Trump, Darren reluctantly agrees. Yet as he sets out to find a girl whose family don't want her found, it is his own family's history that may be brought painfully into the light. And a reckoning with his past may finally show Darren the future he can build.

For me, Texas-born Attica Locke's superb 2017 thriller Bluebird, Bluebird, the first in her series starring black Texas Ranger Darren Mathews, may be one of the best novels of the past decade, with its rich storytelling and incisive observations about dangerous rhetoric emboldening a white supremacist underbelly desperately clinging on in America.

Five years after its excellent sequel, Heaven My Home, we now have a fitting finale to an outstanding ‘Highway 59’ trilogy. With the legal consequences of past choices still hanging over him like a sword of Damocles, a bourbon-soaked Mathews hands in his badge. Then his mother, who’s played a key role in his many troubles, reappears. Apparently sober, wanting his help to find what’s happened to a black girl missing from the all-white sorority where Darren’s mother now works.

Disillusioned by how law and justice are being twisted in Trump’s America, Mathews reluctantly agrees, only to uncover a snake’s den of deceit, and discover far more about his own family history.

Locke once again soaks readers in the East Texas setting, and the humanity and frustrations of good people trying to live and operate in an unjust world. Mathews is confronted not only by the mystery of a missing girl who everyone – even her family – seems to insist is okay, but the mystery of his mother, and his accepted narrative of his own past. 

Locke takes readers on an emotional, character-centric ride through a slice of modern America, where the prejudices and divisions of the past are stirred up and shaken out in various ways in the present.

While it's a little disappointing Locke has said that Guide Me Home will be the final Darren Mathews tale, for the foreseeable future at least - after originally planning a longer running series - overall it is an excellent read and a fitting finale to a terrific trilogy that captures, all to scarily, some of the simmering realities of a nation changed, or perhaps just revealed, by Trump's 'MAGA' inciting runs for President. 

Top shelf. 

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.

Ngā mihi o te tau hau (Happy New Year)

volunteering with homelessness charity Crisis in London on New Year's Day, wearing my Michael Connelly charity t-shirt, which was also to raise funds for a LA homelessness charity

Ngā mihi o te tau hau (Happy New Year), everyone! 

I hope as we turn the calendar from 2024 to 2025 that you have been having a good festive season and are looking forward to a new year full of joys, adventure, and love... and lots of good and great books!

Kia ora 2025. Man, time flies. I remember being a wee kid, working out how old we'd be in the year 2000! Now we're a quarter century past that. Calendar changes are often cause for reflection, eh? Whether we consciously mean to, in terms of making some resolutions etc, or not. 

As I was walking to the tube in the pre-dawn London darkness yesterday, it struck me that I was spending the last day of 2024 doing pretty much the same thing I was doing on the first day of 2024, volunteering with a great group of people at Crisis, a homelessness charity that operates throughout the UK. And today I kicked off my new year by doing the same, somewhat appropriately with a nod to my love of crime fiction by wearing one of my 'Harry Bosch' t-shirts, which has a great message on it. 

"Everybody Counts, or Nobody Counts," is Harry's credo throughout Connelly's fantastic series. 

Michael Connelly wearing one
of the special charity t-shirts

Not bad words to live by. My t-shirt got several positive comments from our guests (rough sleepers) at Crisis today. Perhaps fittingly, I'd actually bought it a few years back when Michael put them up for sale to raise funds for a homelessness charity in Los Angeles. It's a growing issue in many places. 

It's my sixth 'Christmas' volunteering with Crisis. If I couldn't be back 'home' in New Zealand for the holidays, I was very grateful to be ending my year and starting a new one by spending my time doing something to help others, with some great people - fellow volunteers and our guests, once more. 

You can read more about Crisis and the work they do, and how my own eyes were opened by my time volunteering there over the years, in a post I did to start the year, for the Murder is Everywhere website. 

Last night and early this morning before I went on shift I was thinking about all the different kinds of 'New Year's Eves/New Year's Days' I've had throughout my life. 

For more than 20 years, from when I was a new entrant at primary school, my New Years' were always in the Top of the South Island of New Zealand, whether camping by the beach in Kaiteriteri or hanging out with family and friends. Throughout school, university, being a young lawyer, and even my first years of travels, I'd always be home or return home to the Nelson-Tasman region for the holidays. Looking back, as Fred Dagg used to sing, "We don't know how lucky we are". It's a pretty great part of the world to get to call home. 

My first overseas New Year's Eve and New Year's Day was, funnily enough, still a summery one, in Colonia (Uruguay) with my girlfriend and a couple of law school pals, who were randomly passing through Buenos Aires at the same time as us, as 2007 ended and 2008 began. We took the ferry to another country for some fun beachside celebrations and shenanigans. 

Summery New Year's Eve celebrations in Uruguay

Since then it's been a real mix of home and away, from an Egyptian feast with snakes and table dancing in Luxor on New Year's Eve, to US summer camp reunions when I'm just off the plane from a Christmas in Lapland, to 1 January sunrise walks with my daughter around New Zealand rivers and vineyards or quiet parks in COVID-era London or through Kauri forests in Northland.... 

On the first day of 2025, as I unwind from another Crisis shift, I'm grateful for it all. Even the bumps and bruises along the way, in among many joyful moments. 

To all my pals reading this, I hope that however 2024 went for you, that 2025 brings you plenty of joy, adventure, and love. Time flies, and life changes, but it can be full of lots of good things along the way. In the small moments as much as the bigger ones. Here's to a great year of crime and thriller reading, and many other good things for us all. 

Hugs and aroha - Craig S

"Storytelling mastery and a fitting finale" - review of CITY IN RUINS

CITY IN RUINS by Don Winslow (HarperCollins, 2024)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Sometimes you have to become what you hate to protect what you love. Danny Ryan is rich. Beyond his wildest dreams rich.

The former dock worker, Irish mob soldier and fugitive from the law is now a respected businessman – a Las Vegas casino mogul and billionaire silent partner in a group that owns two lavish hotels. Finally, Danny has it all: a beautiful house, a child he adores, a woman he might even fall in love with.

Life is good. But then Danny reaches too far. When he tries to buy an old hotel on a prime piece of real estate with plans to build his dream resort, he triggers a war against Las Vegas power brokers, a powerful FBI agent bent on revenge and a rival casino owner with dark connections of his own.

Danny thought he had buried his past, but now it reaches up to him from the grave to pull him down. Old enemies surface, and when they come for Danny they vow to take everything – not only his empire, not just his life, but all that he holds dear, including his son.

One of the modern greats of crime writing has bowed out in style, as City in Ruins again showcases the storytelling mastery and talents of Don Winslow. His latest not only caps his terrific ‘City’ trilogy about Irish American tragic hero Danny Ryan, but his writing career, as Winslow turns his talents to real-life political battles in the USA. 

Following the events of City on Fire, where Danny Ryan barely survived a New England turf war between Irish and Italian crime families, and City of Dreams, where his attempts to go legit in Hollywood brought further pain and loss, City of Ruins starts with him entwined in the casino industry in Las Vegas. 

He’s settled and happy, raising his son, but Ryan's ambitions bring his past into play, and once again threaten all he loves.

Inspired by Virgil’s poem about a soldier who fled the fall of Troy and became ancestor to the Romans, there’s certainly something timeless, epic, and sweeping about Ryan’s odyssey through turbulent times, cut-throat industries, and deadly feuds. 

City in Ruins is as ambitious as its hero; superior crime writing full of tension and depth. An outstanding novel in of itself, it offers even more to readers who’ve devoured the first two books.

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.

Jack Reacher, PG Wodehouse, and Mumbai slums: an interview with Ajay Chowdhury

Kia ora and haere mai, welcome to the 240th instalment of author interview series, 9mm. Thanks for reading and sharing the 9mm series, and Crime Watch in general (and my work elsewhere) over many years. I've had a lot of fun talking to lots of amazing crime and thriller writers and bringing their thoughts and stories to you.

You can check out the full list of of past 9mm interviewees here. What a line-up! With lots more fun to come. Thanks everyone. If you've got a favourite crime or thriller writer who hasn't yet been part of the 9mm series, please let me know, and now I'm back on deck more fully, I'll look to make that happen for you. We've got several interviews with cool crime and thriller writers from several different countries 'already in the can' that will be published soon, so lots to look forward to in the coming weeks and months.

Today I'm very pleased to welcome to 9mm an exciting newer voice in crime writing, Ajay Chowdhury, a tech entrepreneur and theatre director who was born in India and now lives in London where he builds digital businesses, cooks experimental dishes for his wife and daughters and writes through the night.

Chowdhury won the first Harvill Secker-Bloody Scotland prize (effectively a search for new, underrepresented voices in British crime writing), for the beginnings of what became The Waiter. Disgraced former Kolkata detective Kamil Rahman is waiting tables at a Brick Lane restaurant owned by family friends. When a birthday party for his boss’s friend ends in murder, Kamil is arm-twisted into an unofficial investigation alongside Anjoli, his boss’s precocious daughter. 

The series, which is in development for television, continued with The Cook, which delved into homelessness, The Detective, entwined with government surveillance and AI, and most recently The Spy. But for now, Ajay Chowdhury becomes the latest author to stare down the barrel of 9mm. 

9MM INTERVIEW WITH AJAY CHOWDHURY

Who is your favourite recurring crime fiction hero/detective?

Probably Bernie Gunther, from the Philip Kerr series. I just think following his life from mid 1930s Germany to the 1950s how he changes, everything he's been through, it's absolutely fantastic. And that was kind of my inspiration for when I knew I was going to get to do a second or third Kamil Rahman book, is, you know, I'd love to be able to follow the guy's life. 

What was the very first book you remember reading and really loving, and why?

I read a huge amount when I was a kid, and certainly the Enid Blyton books are the ones that absolutely grabbed me, the Famous Five. But the one that really showed me good writing was PG Woodhouse. I mean his language, I'd read nothing like it. Anyone who can write a line like "he wasn't disgruntled, but neither was he gruntled", that is really good, right?

Before your debut crime novel, what else had you written (if anything) unpublished manuscripts, short stories, articles?

I was very lucky to have written a children's novel which got published in 2016, Ayesha and the Firefish. I'd been telling my kids that little story at bedtime, and I wrote it, then a friend of mine said, I know a publisher, an editor at Penguin. I just got lucky there as well. They sent it, and this was Penguin India, and they said, Yeah, we'll publish it. Then later it got adapted to become a musical in LA and San Francisco - though I didn't write the musical. 

Outside of writing and writing-related activities (book events, publicity), what do you really like to do, leisure and activity-wise?

I'm a huge bridge player. So I play bridge three times a week online. Weekends I'm normally playing a competition online. So I absolutely love playing bridge and then the usual other stuff, you know, travel, eating, cooking. 

What is one thing that visitors to your hometown should do, that isn't in the tourist brochures, or perhaps they wouldn’t initially consider?

I would count Calcutta [now Kolkata] and Bombay [Mumbai] as my hometowns, as I lived in both places. But if I take Bombay, where I have some great memories, this is going to sound a weird thing to say, but visit Dharavi, the biggest slum in the world. My next book is about it, but I went for the first time in January with my wife, and it's an extraordinary place. It's a million people, in pretty much one square mile. And it's factories, it's people living there. It's a complete ecosystem. And it's an extraordinary place to visit, and they do tours of it, which make me feel a little bit bad, because it feels slightly like poverty tourism, but it's an extraordinary place. And the tour guide we took, all the money goes back into the community. 

If your life was a movie, which actor could you see playing you?

I'm a five foot, two inch Indian guy from Mumbai, so I think it would have to be the guy who plays Jack Reacher in the Netflix show [Alan Ritchson]. It'd be pure wish fulfilment. Not Tom Cruise though, that'd be too easy for him to do. But it would be cool to be played by someone six foot six with arms like potato sacks. That's my dream.

Of your writings, which is your favourite or a bit special to you for some particular reason, and why?

Well, it would have to be The Waiter, because it's completely changed the direction of my life. So,  winning the competition and then having them say that, listen, we want more of these books, completely changed my life. I mean, I would not be sitting here next to you at this crime writing festival, Chiltern Kills, if I hadn't won that competition. So yeah, it would have to be that. 

What was your initial reaction, and how did you celebrate, when you were first accepted for publication? Or when you first saw your debut story in book form on a bookseller’s shelf?

So, seeing in a bookshop for the first time. We didn't celebrate it as such, but my wife and I were in Daunt Books in Hampstead, and The Waiter was sitting not on the shelf, they actually had it displayed on a table. And so my wife photographed me in front of it, and then she sneakily took it to the window and put it in the window, photographed me in front of the window, then put it back. So that was very special. The one thing that's never happened so far, and hopefully will sometime, is I have seen someone reading any of my books in the wild, yeah, that would be cool, I'm still waiting for that.

What is the strangest or most unusual experience you have had at a book signing, author event, or literary festival?

Well, I mean, a guy came up to me today in the book signing after our panel saying he just finished reading The Detective and how much he absolutely hated the female character [ed note: Kamil's ex-fiancé Maliha, not Anjoli] ... he told me how much he hated her, how he felt she was completely unnecessary, and didn't understand why I put her in the book. So that was a bit controversial, and a story that quickly comes to mind! 

Kia ora, Ajay, we appreciate you having a chat with Crime Watch. 

"Dark issues and delicious writing" - review of THE SPY

THE SPY by Ajay Chowdhury (Harvill Secker, 2024)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Kamil Rahman is working for the Metropolitan Police when he gets the call from MI5. They've received intelligence of a terrorist plot, and it's Kamil they need. Posing as a disaffected cop, and working once again in Anjoli's beloved restaurant, Kamil infiltrates the cell. From London he is sent to Kashmir, a place he visited with his parents when he was younger. But his allegiance becomes blurred when he finds himself face to face with an old nemesis... 

I’ve been an unabashed fan of tech founder and CEO turned crime writer Ajay Chowdhury’s moreish mystery series starring disgraced Kolkata detective Kamil Rahman since the first outing, The Waiter (2021), which as an unpublished novel won the Bloody Scotland-Harvill Secker Prize for new voices. In that first book, Kamil was eking out a new life as a waiter at Tandoori Knights, a friend’s Indian restaurant in London’s Brick Lane, before murder intervened, and he was arm-twisted into undertaking an unofficial investigation alongside Anjoli, his new boss’s precocious daughter.

My only trouble with Chowdhury’s books is that, in among the dark deeds leavened with plenty of humour and heart, every time I read one I’d become so damned hungry, due to the food references!

As the more-ish series has grown, Kamil has returned to official policing with London’s famed Met Police. Although he perhaps got more respect even as berated waiter in Tandoori Knights. In The Spy he’s recruited by MI5 to try to infiltrate a dangerous terrorist cell. Playing the role of a disenchanted copper, exiled back to the Indian restaurant. Meanwhile some things haven’t changed, including Kamil’s complicated, stuttering, friends or maybe more relationship Anjoli, who once again gets drawn into amateur sleuthing as she starts to investigate the kidnapping of a teenage boy. 

As Kamil’s discoveries lead abroad, into the brutality and suffering of the long-running Kashmir conflict, he and Anjoli both face grave danger. Stakes are high, personally and politically. 

Once again, Chowdhury deftly crafts an engrossing, highly readable tale that delves into some of the darkest issues facing society, while providing plenty of light through the humour and heart of the characters, and some of the events. It's a tricky balance, but Chowdhury deftly pulls it off, delivering another cracking tale in what's become a really wonderful series, and a great addition to the genre. 

The Spy is delicious crime and thriller fiction, on all fronts. 

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.