Fantastic, I'm really enjoying this series and can't wait for the next installment. The characters are vivid and authentic and the story fast paced and exciting.

I didn't know what I was expecting when I picked this book. It's really refreshing to see British South Asian characters in fiction especially once so three-dimensional and well written. I felt that issues surrounding the topic of the book were discussed in an engaging and respectable manner. I've not been so engrossed in book for a while. I'm really looking forward to more from this author.

Before reading this book, I bought the 1st story so I could read in the right order and am so glad I did. They are both excellent books and I really enjoyed them. Highly recommended.

Homegrown Hero is an entertaining and frequently funny thriller set in West London
Jay used to be a drug dealer and an MI5 agent. Now he is trying for a quieter life with an office job. He has a new circle of friends. Unfortunately, his father is a terrorist, and their organisation has put a fatwa on Jay's head. MI5 are still pulling Jay's strings.
The other main character is Imy. Imy was trained in Afghanistan to be a killer. Imy is also trying to live a quiet life as an estate agent with a girlfriend and her son. Somehow, Imy has to deal with Jay, without his two lives colliding. Not to mention the fact that his Aunt keeps trying to find him a wife.
All of this makes for a fast-paced story full of incident that is far from predictable. Four stars.

I would like to thank Netgalley and HQ for an advance copy of Homegrown Hero, the second novel to feature drug dealer turned IT help desk operator Javid “Jay” Qasim.

Fresh from saving London Jay has adopted a lower profile, working for Hownslow council, socialising at a Muslim self help group and renouncing drugs and alcohol. It doesn’t stop MI5 from trying to re-recruit him but it does give the strength to say no. In the meantime Imran “Imy” Saddiqui, a sleeper doing his best to forget his childhood indoctrination is activated.

I thoroughly enjoyed Homegrown Hero which is a gripping, laugh out loud thriller with some serious points to make. It is violent and crude but the black humour makes it seem apt and entirely in keeping with events and the setting. It takes up where the first novel in the series, East of Hownslow, finishes with Jay getting his throat slashed, backtracks a few days then proceeds linearly through much action to a cliffhanger ending. The novel is narrated mostly by Jay and Imy in the first person (each chapter is helpfully titled with the narrator’s name to avoid confusion) with brief forays in the third person into peripheral events. I like the immediacy and intimacy of the first person narrative which draw the reader in and hold on. I was gripped from start to finish.

This is quite a political novel with its emphasis on radicalisation, on both sides of the divide, and the struggle to withstand it and live a moderate life. To be honest I found that part difficult to read as it is so outside my world. Can it be as bad as it is painted? I don’t know but I didn’t connect with it.

The novel, however, thrives on the characters of Jay and Imy. I love Jay, a genuine hero who shrugs off the bad experiences publicly and privately struggles with some form of PTSD. He is an everyday bloke with a nice line in humour who seems to attract trouble more than a magnet. The humour with Imy lies more in his situation as he tries to conceal his relationship with Stephanie from his over protective, doting, Muslim Khala (aunt). I’m sure there is much truth in his situation although maybe not the terrorist thing. My heart went out to him as he tries to manage his situation.

Homegrown Hero is a good read which I have no hesitation in recommending.

Khurrum Rahman burst onto the crime fiction scene in 2017 with his brilliant debut East of Hounslow (which I reviewed here: https://bit.ly/2FyH7Cn). Homegrown Hero is his hotly anticipated sequel and once again we’re with Jay Qasim, a British born Muslim reluctantly recruited by MI5 as an agent (an informant in the police’s parlance). After the events of the first book he’s been dropped by MI5, much to his relief, and is trying to reestablish some sense of normality. But The Teacher, the head of the jihadi group Qasim infiltrated is still at large and some in MI5 want Jay to help them to finish what they’ve started. Meanwhile some within the jihadi group have learnt that Qasim was the one who betrayed them and set an assassin on his tail. While far right thugs and an assault on a Muslim girl leading to her suicide set in motion a powerful subplot.

All this is promising material and certainly current, but the question is, does Rahman pull it off with the aplomb of East of Hounslow? Or does Homegrown Hero suffer from the dreaded second book hurdle?

As with the first book, I firstly have to get my little bugbear out of the way and one which I alluded to at the start. An agent to the intelligence services is what an informant would be to the police, while those employed by the agencies, their staff, are intelligence officers. Many a writer gets such details wrong and the problem is exacerbated by the fact that some countries have agencies which straddle the law enforcement/intelligence divide and don’t obey this rule. A good example of this is the American FBI, both a law enforcement agency and one like MI5 that deals with domestic intelligence, which calls it’s employees agents (confusingly, the CIA which is solely engaged in intelligence, calls its staff officers and its informants agents). Rahman is to be applauded for getting such details right.

The above might appear to be a small doctrinal issue, but it speaks to a wider realism in the narrative. Post-911 Western intelligence agencies were under enormous pressure to prevent further attacks and this was exacerbated after every successive outrage. As always their response was two pronged and both were controversial. The first is electronic surveillance and the Snowden revelations amongst others have demonstrated the controversy that comes with that. The second is human intelligence, the recruitment of agents. A number of revelations have come about in recent years of how intelligence officers have gone to great lengths to recruit agents - offering inducements and where that doesn’t work, engaging in coercion and even blackmail. MI5 has been accused of such behaviour on a number of occasions and there have been reports in the press, and human rights groups have lodged complaints, alleging their officers bullied and harassed Muslims in an attempt to recruit them as agents.

Most spy novels are told from the perspective of the intelligence officer, very few are told from the perspective of the agent. This is similar to crime novels where the vast majority are told from the perspective of the police and very few are told from the perspective of the informant. Where agents or informants do feature in fiction, they’re all too often seen through the eyes of the police or intelligence officers. So they’re portrayed as perhaps shifty and untrustworthy, mercenary or licentious, certainly with motives that are questionable. This might well be understandable and certainly reflects how they’re seen. I’m lucky to know a number of police officers and once discussed the issue with an officer whose work entailed running multiple informants (for a large regional police force in England). I asked how he felt about them and he was blunt in his contempt. When meeting with them he had to pretend to be able to tolerate them, like them even, but his real feelings were clear. To be sure his informants were criminals, whereas some of the informants intelligence agencies recruit will be ordinary people with access, such as Muslim’s in the local community, but the fact remains that distrust can remain especially where the informant is coerced. Jay Qasim, the protagonist of East of Hounslow and Homegrown Hero is such a person, coerced into working for MI5 and then treated appallingly, and his story is told with real humanity and warmth.

If this wasn’t all, the second character the author introduces into Homeland Hero, the assassin, is equally well drawn. He’s a sleeper jihadi, one sent decades before to inculcate himself into British life until one day he’s activated. While this character predicament isn’t as firmly based in reality as Qasim’s treatment at the hands of MI5 (as far as I know at least) there have been sleeper agents in service to the KGB and its successors and much discussion has been had as to the psychology that must go into that. Only a few years ago a whole host of sleeper agents were discovered in the US and then deported back to Russia, some having adult children who had grown up in the America with no idea of what their parents were doing. Rahman gives his sleeper assassin real personality. He’s a man who’s fallen in love with a non-Muslim woman and her child and is reluctant to embrace his calling once he’s activated. I ended up liking this character as much as Qasim and the novel is nail biting at the finale when both characters lives are on the line

One final aspect of this book which I must not overlook, and one which might not be guessed from this review, is the humour. For despite dealing with serious and weighty issues, there are comedic elements to both Homegrown Hero and the previous title, East of Hounslow. Qasim with his quick wit and street smarts is a character with real charisma and his internal monologue can bring on more than the odd chuckle. This not only makes one warm to his predicament but also counteracts some of the darker scenes, thus bringing the narrative a little light.

So conclusions? Homegrown Hero is a worthy book 2 and one which is well worth a read. With both titles the author has managed a remarkable feat, penning popular fiction that tackles weighty topics while not being afraid to pack a punch and broach controversy. With a splash of humour, a likeable protagonist, and a sympathetic antagonist you can’t help but root for too, there really is little not to like.

I chose this book because I had read good things about the author and his work from Ben Aaranovitch, an author I rate highly. I have to say that I found this book extremely challenging to read. It was extremely bleak and although it was very well written and super tense, and I read it very quickly, it rather broke me.

I really loved East of Hounslow, book one of this series, when I read it last year. The action in this book follows on from that and although there is a bit of a catch-up to be found in this book, Jay is a bit complex so to get the very best from this one, I really would recommend reading that one first. And it's great so no real reason not to!
So, Jay has returned home after saving the world. Well, preventing a major terrorist attack. He's put that side of things behind him and now works in a call centre having laid to rest his under-cover life after a nice pay off. Problem is, certain people know what he has done. People he crossed in order to help MI5. And, after all he is still his father's son and his father is still out there. So, inevitably, his past will not say in the past and his attempts to get on with his life are turned upside down and, once again, Jay finds himself in the spotlight once again.
As I devoured the previous book, I devoured this one too. In Jay we have a completely credible character who, due to circumstances, has been catapulted into a very dangerous world. Yes he has street smarts but has he bitten off more than he can chew this time?
In this book we also meet Imy who I also really loved as a characters. I can't say too much about him here due to spoilers about who he is and what he does. Suffice to say that he really does quite a bit of soul searching about some very real issues during the book and I was fascinated by him and his situation throughout.
The plot twists and turns both as you would expect and also the author throws the occasional curve ball in to mix things up a bit. The action is fast and frenetic at times and kept me on my toes throughout. Hard hitting too and a bit graphic along the way. But never to extreme, all perfectly in keeping with the subject matter and level of the story.
Along with Jay and Imy we have a host of other well crafted characters who perfectly play out their parts throughout the book. Again I can't be as specific as I would maybe like to back up my statement but spoilers prevent me so you'll just have to take my word for it. As with the first in series, I had my eyes opened to some of the things that certain members of society have to go through, mostly behind closed doors and I have no reason to think that these aren't very real struggles. My heart bled at times, yes, an emotional action packed storyline! But, as well as all this emotion and action, there are some really funny bits included, comic relief if you like which kept the book as a whole balanced. A lot of the very nasty stuff happens "off camera" and you just get the overview which I found to be a good way of doing things.
As with the ending of book one, this one left me with an "I have to know what happens next" feeling. Not quite a cliff hanger as such but more an ongoing story, or struggle if you like.
This book was a bit more convoluted than the series opener and I did have to have my wits about me as the scene changes often came thick and fast but even with my challenged attention span I managed to keep on top of things nicely.
All in all, I'm happy with my second trip on the Jay-Train - got my ticked pre-booked for his next journey. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

An ok book. It's filled with fun, horror and humour.
Thank you to both NetGalley and HQ Publishers for giving me the opportunity to read Homegrown Hero in exchange for my honest unbiased opinion.

I enjoyed Rahman's first book East of Hounslow but for me this wasn't quite as strong. The good stuff is still there: energetic voices, authentic insights into the lives of young Muslims, primarily men, both recent migrants and second generationers, an up-to-the-moment contemporary plot. I liked that this book did more than the first to show at least some mixed-race relationships, both romantic, and social in the case of Imy's wonderful aunt - this is London, after all: surely we all grew up with, went to school/university with, work with, are friends with and socialise with people who happen to be Muslim?

I think the first book worked better for me because it had a single strong story-line. This one has various plot strands unweaving and that served to dilute things and make the book feel a bit fragmented: we have Jay's ongoing feud with Silas, his recovery from the events of the last book and now, unknowingly, the object of a fatwa; we have Imy struggling between his traumatic past and his possibly more hopeful future with a white-English girlfriend and her son; we have a group of disaffected young Muslims reacting to a racist attack on one of them which has horrific consequences; we have the EDL-style racist thugs planning another attack to get rid of witnesses and their reluctant new acolyte; we have terrorist politics from Jay's father and his group...

Rahman juggles all these stories with some aplomb but I felt that some emotional depth was sacrificed - a tighter, tauter palette would have allowed more of the emotional connection that I felt in the first book. Here things feel too diffuse with the constant switching between stories and some of the characterisation suffers as a result.

I'm being picky and this is certainly well-written with authenticity and insight, a nice line in overturning the kind of lazy stereotypes we see peddled in the right-wing press - read it for sure, just make sure you also pick up the first book if you haven't already.

I thought that Khurrum Rahman’s first novel, East Of Hounslow, was very good. Home Grown Hero, its sequel, is even better. (Although you can read Home Grown Hero as a stand-alone novel, I would strongly recommend that you read East Of Hounslow first – things will mean far more to you.)

We don’t actually catch up with the shocking ending of East Of Hounslow until almost a third of the way through the novel, as we see Jay reorientating his life. He is a cooler, rather more mature character after the events last time, but his narrative voice is still as real and entertaining (and expletive-strewn) as before. However, the decisions he had to make are catching up with him and a thrilling, twisty plot ensues as we get more insight into the nature of international terror and of home-grown conflict and hostility. There is a rich and mature treatment of the influences, biases and characters which make these matters so complex, and it is Rahman’s remarkable human insights which make this book so good – including a heartrending picture of the pain of being on the receiving end of racist abuse and thuggery, plus some genuinely touching moments concerning family and confounded stereotypes. It is also an absolutely cracking story which is full of tension, extremely exciting and which I found difficult to put down.

This is, in short, a really good thriller which also has genuine intellectual weight and important things to say about some of the critical issues of our time, while still being a pleasure to read. I thought it was absolutely excellent and can recommend it very warmly indeed.

(My thanks to HQ for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Khurrum Rahman's debut novel East of Houslow was something refreshingly different Finally something truly new with an insight into the Asian community in London, life as a Muslim in Britain today along with a cast of very well-drawn characters, a bit of politics,plenty of laughs ,snappy dialogue and a great story.
Homegrown Hero is the sequel and continues the misadventure of Javid "Jay" Qasim ,former drug dealer, late of MI5 and call centre worker...............oh and his Dad is the most wanted terrorist on the planet. In other hands the plot would be ridiculous but somehow once again Mr Rahman does what Ben Elton used to be so good at and turns ingredients that could slide into parody,heavy-handed political ranting or a farcical mess into a compelling , very readable and just about believable story.
You really need to have read East of Hounslow to appreciate Homegrown Hero as it's a direct follow-on. New characters are introduced as as we've come to expect from Rahman often they are not what they seem on the surface, I'm not sure who else could elicit sympathy for a prospective jihadi killer.
Jay's life in danger after his previous adventure but he doesn't know it yet,thinking himself safe after one adversary is dealt with he finds himself in the sights of another far more dangerous one. with a potential race war to keep him busy as well.
As in East of Hounslow Rahman gives us plenty to think about, the lot of Muslims in this country,the "war on terror" and how it impacts on people here of various viewpoints and much more..
A great read with an excellent twist at the end and a cliff-hanger of an ending that I hope we don't have to wait too long to see the resolution of.
I'm already a big fan of Khurrum Rahman''s books and look forward to many,many more in this series.

Big thanks to Khurrum Rahman,Harper Collins and Netgalley for my copy in return for an honest review. All opinions are mine,others are available.

Wow what a great follow up to East Of Hounslow which I read and thoroughly enjoyed last year. Homegrown Hero follows Javid Qasim’s adventures after he returns from his work with MI5. They no longer want him although he’s a trained operative, so now he’s keen to get his life back on track and has even taken a 9-5 job working in a council office in the IT department.
However, despite this peaceful existence, life has a habit of sucking him into dangerous situations and when he makes some new friends at the community centre discussion group, little does he realise where this is going to lead.
A new character Imy is also introduced and I really loved him and his difficult dilemma. He aspires to becoming a family man looking after little Jack and living with Stephanie although they are from different cultures but Imy has some dark secrets which threaten both him and those he loves.
The narrative is first person and alternates between Jay and Imy but I suspected from early on that their paths were gong to cross at some point.
The author layers this book so well and there are several strands to the plot including a chilling insight into right wing terrorism. Nothing is black and white and the main protagonists inhabit a world that is predominately grey. Jay struggles to do the right thing as far as his friends are concerned and Imy rails against his childhood upbringing and indoctrination to act in a way that is true to himself.
The ending left me desperate for the next instalment in Jay and Imy’s life- it was such a cliffhanger and I don’t know if I can wait a whole year for book three!.
A wonderful novel and fully deserving of the five star review I am giving it.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my arc in exchange for an honest opinion.

Wow. This was epic. Brilliantly epic.

So we met Jay in last year’s “East of Hounslow “ a novel I devoured with it’s heady mix of action, social issues,thrills and thought provoking realities. Jay, after reading Home Grown Hero, is now definitely one of my favourite fictional characters ever. Rightly so too I think given his ability make me giggle into my cup of tea whilst learning something very important.

In this most excellent of sequels, Jay longs for the quiet life after his previous adventures. But MI5, Jay’s terrorist Father, his friend’s and seemingly pretty much the world obviously didn’t get the memo…

This is a whole lot of fun, but equally it is a book like the last that can show you through it’s characters, their actions and their inner thoughts, the realities of being termed a minority -The devastating impact of assumption, of almost casual racism, of our current social and political situation, it is an eye opener in so many ways.

What this author does so beautifully is show us all the shades of grey, not falling into the trap of “this is good this is bad” but layering the plot with all the nuances, all the possibilities between A and B. How actions create reactions, one thing escalates, how easy it is to fall into all the dark places before you even notice. It’s extraordinarily clever and done in a hugely absorbing and entertaining way.

Then we have Immy, who just encompasses the lot – a new character who I found highly engaging and divisive, an equal and an opposite for our reluctant hero Jay, between them they’ll drive you positively crazy but you’ll love every minute.

No real plot details in this review because you should just take the journey as it comes, Home Grown Hero is a wild ride of hilarity and horror – I spent the final pages reading madly and clutching my head, it is fast, intelligent, gorgeously real and intricately woven.

That ending though…..

Highly Recommended.