Book review 'The Spinner’s Tale': Terror that thrills

He has only written two books so far, but I can say this with complete confidence: no matter how many books Omar Shahid Hamid writes, he will never fail to give you an ending you never, in your wildest dreams, expected.

As a matter of fact, I was confident of this even after Hamid’s first book, The Prisoner, a thriller that has every bit of thriller-type plot element in place, but ends like no thriller I’ve ever read before. (I actually read The Prisoner a second time after I’d reviewed it for this paper just to see if I had imagined the ending. I hadn’t. And I was stunned all over again.) So, I was very certain when I read the blurb at the back of The Spinner’s Tale, Hamid’s second book, that however I imagined this book would end, I’d be completely wrong. And in that, I was completely right.

The Spinner’s Tale is about Sheikh Ahmed Uzair Sufi, one of the most terrifying terrorists Pakistan has ever produced. He’ll stop at nothing — everyone knows that. He even thinks Osama bin Laden is a clown. And he’s immensely charming. So charming that it’s wise to not exchange a single word with him, not even a courteous greeting, because once you’ve engaged with him on even the most pedestrian terms, who knows what he’ll convince you to do.

The Pakistani authorities discover this to their own cost when the Sheikh has been captured and found to have turned his prison guards into rabid jihadis just like himself, intent on springing him from Hyderabad jail. So they send him off to the back of beyond — “a particularly desolate corner of the Nara Desert.” There, under the eye of assistant superintendent of police Omar Abassi, they hope the Sheikh will fester and be forgotten.

It should work out that way. Abassi is a particularly conscientious young man, so conscientious that he knows he hasn’t a prayer of becoming one of Pakistan’s star policemen any time in his career. That doesn’t stop him from trying to find out as much as he can about the Sheikh. In typical subcontinental style, the Sheikh has just been dumped on him without much of a briefing. Abassi has had no previous experience of jihadis. He feels he must learn more. And he does.

Once, not very long ago, the Sheikh wasn’t the Sheikh. He was the son of a postal officer studying at Pakistan’s most elite school — known as the Eton of the East — on a scholarship. Since most of the other students came from extremely wealthy and powerful backgrounds, he kept to himself. Till he came across a boy named Eddy — short for Adnan — who was, if possible, even crazier about cricket than himself.

Eddy gave Ahmed Uzair Sufi the cool nickname of “Ausi”. Eddy gave Ausi the courage to approach Sana, the girl he’d long had a crush on. And though even Eddy couldn’t give Ausi the nerve to tell Sana how he felt about her, Sana, together with Eddy, became Ausi’s closest friend. So what made a boy like Ausi become a jihadi?

That isn’t the question Abassi sets out to find an answer to, but, of course, it does come up in some detail during the investigation. Abassi actually wants to know more about Eddy, the friend the Sheikh is still exchanging letters with. For all the Pakistani government knows, Eddy is about to create more terror on the Sheikh’s behalf. So Eddy must be found. But though he’s still writing to the Sheikh, Eddy, the key to the Sheikh, simply can’t be found.

Omar Shahid Hamid is a former police officer and he writes with a conviction that can’t be disputed. Every detail of the book seems real; every emotion completely human. He also writes rather well: this book has style. But The Spinner’s Tale, like The Prisoner before it, has a major flaw. It isn’t the kind of book that puts you into an extremely bad mood when you’re interrupted mid chapter or between chapters. It isn’t what’s called “a page-turner”.

I know I said at the beginning of this review that you can always expect the most unexpected of endings from Omar Shahid Hamid. I stand by that and salute him for it. Too often have I said of a book that I loved, “what a pity that the author didn’t know how to end it”.

Hamid’s beginnings are also excellent. They hold the promise of exciting things to come, just as good thrillers should. You’re prepared to bite your nails in anticipation, switch off your phone, and plaster your doors with “Do Not Disturb” signs. But the middles of his books sag. Badly. Like a butt in a hammock.

In The Spinner’s Tale, much as you’re curious about what turned minority-protective, anti-beards Ausi into a minority-despising, weirdo-beardo himself, you find the exchange of letters between Eddy and Ausi tedious after a while. Too many of these letters do too little to take the story forward. If I hadn’t been so certain the end of the book would blow my mind, I might actually have put it down to pick up later only from a sense of duty. So I gritted my teeth and ploughed on — and as I knew I would, I had my reward.

As you will too, when you read this book. Because read it you must.

Kushalrani Gulab is a freelance editor and writer who dreams of being a sanyasi by the sea