Abir Mukherjee’s new standalone Hunted treads familiar ground in a novel about the fallout from a terrorist attack in the United States, but David Robinson explores how it stands out by placing itself right in the middle of contemporary culture and transatlantic political debate, subverting expectations along the way.

Hunted
By Abir Mukherjee
Published by Harvill Secker

Stephen King did it in 849 pages with 11/22/63. Don DeLillo took three years to do it with Libra. James Ellroy did it with American Tabloid, which Time magazine reckoned was 1995’s best read. All three of them chose a subject for their fiction so central to the American psyche that it comes with its own Wikipedia category: ‘Novels about the assassination of John F Kennedy’. 

Move further away from the historical record, make the subject an assassination attempt on a fictional American president rather than a real one, and there are more titles still. Indeed, this is such a crowded field that a thriller about a terror plot to kill a US President has to be very special to stand out. Abir Mukherjee’s Hunted might well be just that book. 

Hunted represents a huge change for Mukherjee, a Bengali Scot now living in Surrey, who is best known for his five Wyndham and Banerjee novels set in 1920s India. As these have had both critical acclaim (‘Not just excellent characterisation and historical credibility but bravura plotting too’ – BooksfromScotland.com) and prizes to match, as well as worldwide sales of 400,000 in 15 languages, the temptation to follow up with the sixth in the series must have been strong. But while that is still down for publication next year, Hunted – his first standalone novel – is so of-the-moment that it just won’t wait.  

Here’s the background. We’re in the US, and November’s ‘toxic’ presidential election is just eight days away. Recognise any of the candidates? 

‘A man that was quite possibly deranged, that half the populace viewed as a dangerous, egotistical charlatan who’d run over his mother to get into the White House was, at the same time, worshipped as the messiah by the other half, who’d probably view that act of matricide as an act of selfless patriotism….’   

A bomb explodes in a Burbank shopping mall, killing 63 people and injuring 114. The woman who planted it, a British Muslim, died in the blast. An organisation calling itself Sons of the Caliphate claims responsibility and demands the release of all remaining prisoners at Guantanamo. It is, says investigating detective Sheyra Mistry’s boss at the FBI, ‘the hard right’s wet dream’. 

We’ve met detectives like Mistry before. They’re mavericks, so they run into collapsing buildings in search of clues when all their colleagues are running the other way. They’re intuitive, but because they’re also so outspoken, their bosses always want them off the case. They’re workaholics, and it’s wrecked their family life. True, Mistry is non-white, which is a change from stereotype, so she’ll make a point of holding her photo ID close to her face ‘to help people who have trouble telling one brown woman from another’. 

In London, Sajid Khan’s experience of racism is more visceral: his daughter Mia is lying in a vegetative state in hospital after being batoned by police breaking up a demo outside the US embassy. The FBI are on the trail of his other daughter, Aliyah, who arrived in the US with the woman who planted the shopping mall bomb. They don’t know what we already do: that Aliyah is in a remote Oregon compound with a group of political radicals, including a US Army veteran called Greg who was badly injured in Afghanistan. And they certainly don’t know that Greg’s mother Carrie has persuaded Sajid to go to the States and find their children before the police do. 

That’s the set-up, and I’m not going to tell you anything else. Not a word of who’s in the Sons of the Caliphate and who isn’t. Nothing about how Sajid and Carrie get into the US. Not a mention of where the next bombs go off (and they do) or how they affect the last week of the presidential race. Who’s that woman running the Oregon camp and why is everyone so afraid of her? Sorry: not going to say. 

What I will say is that Hunted would make a great film. Because while the chase is an essential part of a good thriller, most of them give you just the one. Here there are three at the same time: the police are hunting the parents (Greg and Carrie), who are in turn hunting their wayward kids, who are themselves the subject of a nationwide manhunt. And I do mean nationwide: in the best road movie tradition, we’re stringing together quite a few states here, all the way from the Rockies to the Great Plains to a climactic eve-of-election rally in Florida.   

Usually, when there’s just one couple on the run, no matter how mismatched they appear to be at the start, there’s a likelihood that by the end there’ll be some sort of romance. Sajid, though, has such a refreshingly strong sense of izzat (honour) that he feels awkward even sharing a seat with Cassie on a London bus, never mind sharing anything else. He is, we come to understand, a devoted father to his two girls, and having lost one is determined to do everything he can to save the other. Mukherjee clearly realises the importance of clearly establishing the depth of Sajid’s love for his children, as without it the implausibility of his mission to rescue his daughter would become apparent. Instead, he is not only the linchpin of the plot but the most interesting character in it. 

And as for the plot itself … well, Mick Herron calls it a masterclass and Ruth Ware says it will keep you guessing, and they should know: indeed, right from the start, when we see how frightened the shopping mall bomber is, you half-suspect that it’s not going to be obvious. That suspicion hardens into a certainty by the time you reach what would seem like an obvious denouement – and then realise that there are still another 300 pages to go. It’s a thrilling, twisting ride, so densely plotted as to make Mukherjee’s more gently paced Wyndham and Banerjee novels read like Anita Brookner. But for all our sakes, let’s hope that, come November 2024 it remains wildly imaginative and enjoyable fiction and nowhere near fact. 

Hunted by Abir Mukherjee is published by Harvill Secker, priced £14.99.