The Khan by Saima Mir

 

Jia Khan is a successful criminal law barrister. She’s also the estranged daughter of a powerful Bradford-based crime lord, Akbar Khan. The Khan’s are Muslim and of the Pukhtan ethnic group, which hails from Afghanistan and north-west Pakistan. They’re revered in the Pakistani community of Bradford, and rule through the carrot and the stick - enforcing their will and appealing to traditional values, but equally keeping the peace and a lid on petty crime. But when her father is murdered, and her bother abducted, the latter by Andrzej Nowak, an East European crime boss (and Jia suspects he’s responsible for her father’s murder, too), she has to return to the family fold to help. 

This is a book which many have compared to a modern-day Godfather, and the comparison is apt. It’s as much a family saga as it is a crime novel, with Jia Khan the Al Pacino character, e.g. the reluctant prodigal child who ends up rising to the top (I confess to never having read the novel by Mario Puzo, and am basing my remarks on the films). And like The Godfather, we follow Jia as she’s inexorably drawn into the criminality she ran away from, the close knit bonds of family and tradition compelling her to do so to defend those she loves. Though again, without meaning to labour the comparison, just as with Pacino’s character, there’s a sense that Jia is not as reluctant as she at first seems.

There are a couple of niggling issues I had with The Khan. The criminal network she leads finds it a little too easy to outwit the authorities by using Tor and the dark web. In reality, the police, the National Crime Agency, and other enforcement agencies, can track such people down, as recent successes against the Encrochat encrypted phone system and others show. It’s difficult, and many get away with it, but to imply the authorities are clueless of such things, and that such a large criminal organisation as the Khans’ would never be spotted, stretched credulity. That said, this was a minor point and I accept the author engaged in a little creative license, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

There aren’t too many novels which examine organised crime from within the Muslim community, or indeed from Bradford, and this was a book firmly set in that community and environment. It worked well and gave an insight into the close-knit bonds of kinship within those communities. There are several linked issues which the author touched upon too, which added to the rich atmosphere she evoked, such as how Asian youth involved in the Bradford riots of 2001 received harsher penalties than white participants, and how this fostered resentment in those communities. This sort of detail grounded the novel in the area's history and added to its sense of place.

The Khan is an impressive debut, and Saima Mir is an accomplished writer. I look forward to reading whatever she writes next, especially if Jia Khan features in a sequel. 

4 out of 5 stars