Review: Rare Moral Insight, Fresh Writing
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 15, 2014
This tightly-plotted crime novel featuring a humble news reporter as sleuth is satisfying in several unexpected ways, one that it is neatly structured with succinct prose so that you can read the book in one sitting – perhaps on a longish train journey. Secondly, woven into the story are lessons in South Asian Muslim belief and culture, setting the record straight. Third, though the novel has brutally cold killing in its course of unfolding, these are compensated with wonderfully warm “good guys” who act on compassion. Fourth, a culturally-rooted mother is an asset in the plot, rather than the usual negative influence on the writer’s life.It’s not that the sympathetic characters are flawless; the main ones are on the brink of failure. Hyder Ali, the rookie journalist, is hanging on by his fingernails in a dying industry; has self-doubts in the shadow of his athletic and ambitious doctor brother; and he is somewhat a mama’s boy.  Tom Logan is a veteran cop whose reputation has been damaged by his self-pitying alcoholism following his wife’s traffic death.  The current victim was Ali’s Jewish professor of accounting who was obsessed by conspiracy theories. He is found hanging in his study with a suicide note and a pill bottle nearby.The one character who is apparently perfect is Jessica Freeland, a sweet (and probably pure) college girl determined to find out how her father really died. She is the damsel in distress. She goes to Ali for help because her father told about him, his favorite student. Ali’s collaboration with her is set into motion when he receives a packet of torn diary pages from the dead man.Separately, the chief of police is trying to rehabilitate his best cop, and Logan recognizes something in the hanging investigation that rings a bell. He, too, has a part of the puzzle.The plot is enticing and fast-paced, the prose style Hemingway-esque. Most remarkable from my perspective is the author’s casual wondering about the anchorless, misdirected, and sometimes corrupt society around him. The story is an old one: corporate crime resulting from greed. He manages to give it tenderness as well as depth in spite of the villains seeming close to being stock characters (I can see them drawn in comic books). Ali and Logan are complex. Qureshi does an alcoholic very convincingly and in detail; that is in itself instructive. I am curious to know if his day job might be social work, or perhaps faith counseling