Ride or Die by Khurrum Rahman

This is the third outing for Jay Qassim, the protagonist of Khurrum Rahman’s excellent spy thriller series. I’ve read and reviewed both of the previous books and was very keen to read this and see how poor Jay is getting on.

Ride or Die picks up where book two, Homegrown Hero, left off. Imran Siddiqui, one-time sleeper terrorist and a man who was tasked to kill Jay and failed to do so, lives with the consequences: his family murdered in a suicide bombing revenge attack. Jay Qassim for his part has been dropped by MI5 once more. Always the unwitting agent, they now have no further use for him. There’s tension between the two because Imran blames Jay for the death of his family. If only he had obeyed his orders and killed Jay, his family would still be alive. Jay for his part feels overwhelmed by guilt.

These two are thrown together once more when they learn that Jay’s father, the leader of a global jihadi group, might still be alive. Jay is conflicted. He hates what his father did, the terrorism that he instigated, but the man's still his dad. Imran blames Jay’s father most of all for the death of his family, it was he after all who gave the orders. The two are tasked to go to Pakistan/Afghanistan to track down Jay’s father, but they both have conflicting and unspoken intentions for what to do when they get there. And what of MI5? And what of the new splinter group, more virulent than that which Jay’s father led?’

Ride or Die is a slight departure for Rahman in that his previous two books have focused a lot more on Jay's relationship with MI5. He was bullied to a great extent into becoming a source for the Security Service and this portrayal, and the tensions between on the one hand MI5 doing valuable work in stopping terrorism, and on the other, their manipulation and coercion of young Muslims in order to achieve this, was very well portrayed. In this book, MI5 is still on the scene, but Jay is divorced from it to a greater extent because he’s in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and he has his own motivations for being there.

But the fact that the author has taken a slightly different path for this novel is no bad thing and Ride or Die remains a great addition to the series. Neither has the author lost his eye for critical representation of the intelligence agencies and Western foreign policy. Without lapsing into polemic, neither gets off lightly in this novel. While no excuses are made for the jihadis and their violence, this novel, like its predecessors, continues to be a corrective to some of the more tub-thumping examples of the spy thriller genre.

Finally, I need to say something about the humour in this title. In each of my reviews for Rahman’s novels, I’ve tended to focus on the more serious elements and neglected to stress how these are also great fun to read. Jay is his usual brash and bolshy self, always ready with a quip and a great turn of phrase. These books are a joy to read but have a heart and a cerebral core too.

As always with Rahman, Ride or Die is highly recommended, and I look forward to the next instalment in the series.

 4 out of 5 stars