Hunted is a very gripping thriller that pulls you in and doesn't let go, full of good characters and is very well plotted. This is the first book I've read from this author but I will be looking out for more. Thanks to Random House UK and Netgalley for this review copy.

This is a book about family, conspiracy, and connections and it is done in a wonderful way. It is one of those books that is complex when you want to explain anything about it, but while reading it flows wonderfully.

The story starts with a dramatic opening and the ramifications are felt from the US to the UK. A mother is searching for her son and connects to a man in the UK. He discovers his daughter did not go on the trip he thought she had, instead she went to a different destination. Together these two parents must use what they know of their children to discover the reasons and also where they may go to try to save them.

The synopsis for this book is brief and does not really go into any detail about what this book is about. So I am not going to go into it either, that way you can discover the plot for yourself.

The author has created a story that involves family and how a parent cannot always know what their child is doing. As children get older they form their own opinions and they may think what they are going to do is the right thing, but are they fully aware of the consequences of their actions? In some ways, the author takes the naivety of the teens in this story to manipulate by using other characters to use them for their own end.

The tension is evident throughout the story as there is a race against time for all of the characters. They seem to pair up naturally and you find yourself wondering who will reach who first. A wrong decision could be catastrophic but then there is an FBI agent who has a bit more savvy to her and starts to read between the lines. The race is one that is against time and against others and this makes the pacing of this book very good indeed.

I am well aware that this is a very disjointed review but I am so reluctant to give anything away. So I will say that this is one that is complex but well laid out, it is tense and dramatic and the author has done a very good job of bringing sensitive subject matter into a different focus of sorts. Yeah, still vague I know! If you are a fan of crime, thriller and mystery stories with politics, manipulation and one that is full of action then this is one to have on your list. I enjoyed it a lot and would happily recommend it.

I have enjoyed those of Mukherjee’s historical Indian thrillers that I have read, and Hunted combines the social consciousness of those stories with an up-to-date thriller plot.

It is a week before the presidential elections when a bomb goes off in an LA shopping mall.

In London, armed police storm Heathrow Airport and arrest Sajid Khan. His daughter Aliyah entered the USA with the suicide bomber, and now she’s missing, potentially plotting another attack. But then a woman called Carrie turns up at Sajid’s door after travelling halfway across the world. She claims Aliyah is with her son Greg, and she knows where they could be.

Back in the US, Agent Shreya Mistry is closing in on the two fugitives. But as she investigates, she comes to realises that there is more to this case than meets the eye, and she begins to suspect a wider conspiracy. Hunted by the authorities, the two parents are thrown together in a race against time to find their kids before the FBI does, and stop a catastrophe that will bring the country to its knees.

Hunted is a well written and gripping thriller that tackles some difficult issues in an attention grabbing way. The plotting is intricate and interesting, and the book builds to a tense conclusion. There are some insightful reflections on the modern society, and the characters are well fleshed out and convincing, although not terribly likeable.

This was a solid read for me, although I think prefer the more engaging tone of Mukherjee’s earlier books.

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.

This was my first book by Abir Mukherjee and I enjoyed his writing style and voice.

The book has a slow start but things soon start happening and the book becomes a fast-paced, compelling read. The story kept surprising me and I wanted to find out 'what happened next'.

I enjoyed this book and couldn’t guess what was going to happen next. A good read, definitely one for modern crime fiction lovers! Recommend!

Hunted by Abir Mukherjee.......WoW this book was excellent,! it had it all it was fast-paced with lots of twists and turns that just made your head spin!!! (as they say) The characters were excellent and they all made this book an excellent one to get your teeth into.

In London, the police storm Heathrow Airport to bring in a father for questioning about his missing daughter.

In Florida, a mother makes a connection between her son and the bomber, fearing he has been radicalised.

and then in Oregon, an unknown organisation’s conspiracy to bring America to its knees unfolds…..........WoW

Now, On the run from the authorities, the two parents are thrown together in a race against time to stop a catastrophe that will derail the country’s future forever.

But can they find their kids before it’s too late? ......Page Turn! Page Turn!

A great holiday read - I love it.....and Highly recommend Hunted.

Big thank you to Netgalley and Random House UK, Vintage | Harvill Secker for my ARC.

Hunted was a book whose cover had caught my eye and I was drawn in even further by the synopsis. It’s an absolute corker of a book and a real rollercoaster from start to finish.

We have two parents from different sides of the world who have unwittingly joined forces to search for their missing children. British father Sajid is desperately trying to find his daughter Aliyah, who was last seen on CCTV with a suicide bomber. American mother Carrie is also frantically searching for her son Greg, who is rumoured to be fleeing from the FBI and seems to be connected to Aliyah.

I can truly say I’ve not read a story with a plot quite like this one - I’ve read stories focused on bombs and terrorism but not one that has so many different viewpoints of the same events. I was absolutely enthralled and became caught up in the storyline straight away - it’s ridiculously tense and fast-paced. The characters are written in such a way that you feel like you know them intimately and I was forever trying to figure out in which direction they might go next.

Hunted is an excellent action packed thriller and one I would recommend highly!

Thank you to Random House UK & Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

After a bomb goes off in a US shopping mall, Sajid's daughter Aliyah and Carrie's son Greg become fugitives on the run. While the FBI search for the pair, the two parents who have never met before set out to find their children.

Hunted is a superb book full of tension and non-stop action.

You will definitely need to remind yourself to not hold your breath while you're reading this one as you could easily do so for the entirety of the book!

I adored the bond between Sajid and Carrie because even though they barely knew each other, they were united by a shared need to protect their children and this created a really unique relationship.

I enjoyed that the story was told from different perspectives and this added so much pace to the book. It moves so quickly that if there's a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter with one set of characters, you soon become absorbed in the next chapter with a different set of characters before you can even wonder what was just happening.

There's a lot of buzz going around about this book and I can definitely see why! A must-read.

Thank you Random House for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Hunted by Abir Mukherjee is a debut book by the author and as an author’s first book it was a stunning, engrossing read. Can two parents find their lost children before disaster strikes. Young women and men are being radicalised and they have already had one bomb explode and cause death and destruction, where will the other bombers strike and can the FBI stop them in time?
A hauntingly good book.
Highly recommended

Three people’s lives are about to intertwine in a devastating way.

Sajid Khan is the father of Aliyah who has disappeared after entering the United States in the company of another young woman who has just died in a devastating suicide bombing. He finds himself heading to the US himself to find his daughter.

Greg is a veteran from Afghanistan who is part of a terrorist network who has just made its first strike but is preparing for a much larger attack. But he is having his doubts, especially as he has fallen in love with Aliyah. He is determined that they need to get away – but can he convince Aliyah.

And Agent Shreya Mistry is the only person who seems to be spot the links in the chain. But somebody in the agency seems determined to keep her as far away from the investigation as possible…

OK, so we’re firmly in thriller territory here. There’s plenty of twists and turns but it’s not a mystery per se. No problem with that, I love a good thriller. And this is an excellent thriller.

It’s almost entirely focussed on the three characters mentioned about, with chapters alternating between them – actually, it’s often two consecutive chapters per character, which was oddly slightly confusing for this bear of little brain, although luckily the chapters are labelled with who they’re focussed on.

Abir Mukherjee is best known for the Sam Wyndham series set in post WWI India and as co-host of the Red Hot Chilli Writers podcast with Vaseem Khan. This book takes him away from the historical setting and right up to date. In some ways, scarily so – modern thrillers always seem to have a bit of lag on them with current events, yet this could have been pulled from today’s newspapers.

And that is my only problem with the book – it was actually a really uncomfortable read. Nothing in the plans of the terrorists seemed unbelievable – well, maybe the final reveal of the grand plan – and Mukherjee does a magnificent job of getting right under the reader’s skin. I got the same feeling at times that I occasionally get when I try and read true crime books, a really unsettling feeling that it takes a really talented writer to evoke.

In many ways, this is an essential read. The characters are believable, not just the three that we get to know well, and there’s far more going on than you might expect. For example, there’s a scene at roughly the midway point that would be the finale in a lot of books, but there’s far more plot to come after that.

All in all, this is quite some achievement. I don’t know that I’ll rush to read it again, but I will be making time to go back to the Sam Wyndham series very soon.

Hunted is out this Thursday from Random House in hardback and ebook. Many thanks to the publisher for the review e-copy via NetGalley.

"You know we have to. It's the right thing to do. And when it's done, we'll be together."

At a shopping mall in the U.S., a young woman carries out a suicide attack, killing dozens right in the middle of a presidential campaign. She's part of a group that plans to change the face of America, and this attack is only the beginning.

FBI agent Shreya Mistry is on the case. But not for long. Her unorthodox methods mean she's being transferred. However, she believes her suspicions about the case are worth following up on, and she goes rogue, trying to find out who is behind the attack and what their mission is.

Sajid Khan is detained by UK police after his daughter is identified as belonging to the terror group. He thought she was teaching English in Japan. When the mother of another group member arrives in London, the two decide to flee to the U.S. to find their wayward children and stop them from doing something they cannot return from.

The pace of the book is frenetic and I enjoyed the twists. The thing is, I struggled to identify with the characters. I didn't for one moment feel sorry for the 'brainwashed' members of what I thought was a kind of cult. I did have some sympathy for the parents who want to help their children but they just do so many silly things in their quest.

Shreya is an engaging character though her troubled, flawed anti-hero personality is too much of a classic detective cliche to be really interesting.

This was my second action thriller in as many days and maybe it's just not the sub-genre for me. I think I should stick to psychological thrillers, crime and mysteries.

Wow! My first book by this author, and it was brilliant. From the first page, I was in for the ride. Fast paced, short chapters and suspense. The characters were well drawn and believable and the plot was well crafted. I couldn’t put it down! Highly recommended.

This is the first book I have read by this author. It deals with the treatment of ethnics a and terrorism within our community but did not really absorb me. Read in a day to hit the publication day. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to ARC this book.

I think there is a huge weight of expectation for writers from readers and reviewers alike, who break away from their established series to flex their writing versatility. There have been several British crime writers recently who have done this very successfully, including William Shaw, Will Dean and Trevor Wood to name but three, producing high quality thrillers significantly different in tone and pace to their previous books. So seeing that Abir Mukherjee was releasing Hunted, a high octane thriller, having been so firmly immersed in his, it has to be said, blindingly brilliant British Raj Wyndham/Bannerjee series, my interest was well and truly piqued…

This book has already attracted a huge amount praise from not only readers and reviewers, but many across the crime writing community, so much so, that I wondered whether it was worth me adding my still, small voice to the mix. For the purposes of my review, I will only be dealing fleetingly with plot, as the twists and turns in this one are enough to give you virtual whiplash, and the revealing of spoilers was just far too hard to avoid. Suffice to say, I pitched it to a customer in the bookstore where I work as “so good, you won’t even want to go for a wee“…

What I will say is that there is a tremendously assured handling of plotting and tension, and I loved the changes of pace and mood, with Mukherjee speeding up and slowing down the plot very much reflecting the inner and outer torment of his protagonists. There was a beautiful balance between pace and introspection throughout, giving us the time and space to not only become completely involved in the intertwining narratives and characters, but also to stay engaged and compelled by the terrorism/ thriller aspect of the book. The plot itself is utterly gripping, and so apposite to the troubled and politically turbulent times we live in. References to contemporary situations and flashpoints are liberally sprinkled in every part of the storyline, both subtle and less nuanced, giving this a bang up to the minute feeling, as we make connections to the dichotomy of antagonistic views, policies and divisions that we observe throughout society today. Take it from me, the plot is superb…

Having read many thrillers over the years, I often get frustrated that in order to hold the reader by the short-and-curlies in terms of an immersive thriller, that sometimes the need to flesh out, and produce well-formed characters, frustratingly goes by the wayside for the wham, bam, and kapow moments. What particularly impressed me about this book was the weight and solidity that the protagonists have, be they major or more minor characters, and how astutely the author puts these characters under huge amounts of pressure within the plot. Agent Shreya Mistry is a ND character, who is not only fierce, determined and seemingly fearless, but also difficult to manage, being shifted from one field office to another, and not one to suffer fools gladly,

“an agent without a home: a problem without a solution.”

She has an innate talent for thinking outside the box, and not prone to making lazy assumptions about people, but whose private life is messy and complicated. I thought she was absolutely marvellous, and as the story ping-ponged between the three different narratives, I was exceptionally eager to get back to her, not only wondering what she would do next, but what bruised egos and path of destruction would lie in her wake,

“No it was better to sit there and take the crap; to listen to the man in authority. That’s what smart women always did, wasn’t it? Defer to a mediocre man.”

An incredibly mercurial woman, but who wouldn’t want her on their side when the chips are down, or the stakes are high?

I was incredibly moved by two characters in particular, Greg who is involved in the terrorist group wreaking havoc on civilian targets, and Sajid, a desperate father seeking to extricate his daughter from the self same group. Both these characters are written with a huge weight of empathy and pathos, having experienced either the worst that life can throw at them, or the general disdain of society at large, despite their best efforts to overcome this. Greg had served his country, but finds himself isolated and ostracised. Sajid aspires to be the best father he can be, but by doing right and encouraging his daughters to question and challenge, his efforts have ended in personal grief and persecution. I was completely emotionally invested in both of them, which made the book an incredibly bitter-sweet reading experience, which again circumvents the traditional tropes of the thriller genre.

On a lighter note, I also had a particular affection for Mike Raven, who assists Mistry in gathering information by fair means or foul, with his gruff manner and general snarkiness “a surly old bastard with a penchant for…punk bands and little time for social niceties“- what a guy…

So there you have my two penn’orth to add to the clarion of voices raised in unison as to the brilliance of this thriller. Hunted is fast, furious, gripping, with a multitude of astute social and political observations, and peopled by an exceptional cast of characters from all walks of life, with such different backgrounds, beliefs, motivations and sensibilities. I think it’s fair to say, I loved it.

Highly recommended.

This was a well written fast paced thriller. Multiple POV is usually something I enjpy but this time I had clear favourites and so wanted to get back to their storyline and couldn't get invested in others. I still enjpyed the book overall.

What compels someone to take a bomb into a crowded place and leave it to explode? Ideology. But must that be innate, or can it be inculcated? When Yasmin, a young Muslim girl, walks into an LA shopping mall with a bomb, and then dies when it explodes, the obvious reason is ideology, But it pays to distrust obvious answers. After watching the CCTV of the event, FBI Special Agent Shreya Mistry suspects that Yasmin was not working alone and had not intended there to be any deaths. Shreya is not exactly one born to go with the obvious or to follow orders from her bosses, in fact she is more of a thorn in their side. Instead of taking her seriously, her immediate boss takes her off the investigation and gives her five days to transfer to a minor post in San Diego. Instead, she goes to Portland because that is where Yasin entered the country. Her investigation will lead to a major plot with world shattering implications.
I’ve synopsized one of the main plot lines above, but the whole plot is much more complicated and involves a multiply tracked hunt across the States (hence the title). These tracks are too interwoven to separate without creating spoilers. Suffice it to say that there is more or less continuous jeopardy right up to the last sentence (I’m not actually very keen on that last sentence). The characters are all quite solid and believable, although their actions are mostly irrational (but that’s often the way with chase thrillers).
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a draft proof copy for the purpose of this review.

This is the first of this authors books that I've read and I was not disappointed! It's an excellent read with many twists and turns and certainly no shortage of thrills.
A storyline based around terrorism, radicalisation and US politics this is action packed throughout and one that is very well written.
Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

First time reading this author. I enjoyed reading the book however in my opinion many of the things that happened in the book are two far fetched and just wouldn't happen and while everyone has poetic licence when I'm reading a book and I believe thigs couldn't happen it detracts from my enjoyment of the story hence the 4 stars instead of 5

This book started out pretty slow but once the story got going it was extremely addictive!, I thoroughly enjoyed this and would read future books from this author

This was an OK read for me. The different perspectives felt a little jarring at first and it took me a little time to get into, but it did pick up and had some good twists towards the end.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ My first book by the author and I did enjoy it.

It’s more of a political thriller with views of the author threading through but I enjoyed the more topical storytelling.

It did feel a bit disjointed at times with the different perspectives that didn’t quite flow and I found it slow at times.

But over all, an ok read.