The Stranger by Simon ConwayMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
‘My name is Nasruddin al-Raqqah.’
'I was kidnapped by the British for a crime I did not commit and they sent me to Damascus. I was questioned and tortured, I spent more than ten years in a tiny cell deep under the ground without sunlight, without speaking. Every day I washed the bodies of those killed by Assad. Thousands of bodies, men and women, I thought I was dead and in hell.'
'But now I am free.’
Ten years ago, MI6 Officer, Jude Lyon witnessed the rendition of The Engineer, a terrorist responsible for the killings of 25 British soldiers in a fiendishly clever attack in Pakistan. Haunted by his part in the handing over of the captive and his pregnant wife to torture, Jude becomes involved once more when The Engineer, long presumed dead, is offered for sale on the dark web by a terrorist organisation who have violently freed him from captivity. The press have now come into possession of documents proving British complicity in The Engineer’s rendition, Jude is caught in the political crossfire as the guilty scramble to cover their tracks while their rivals seek advantage, and he is unable to shake the memory of Nasruddin al-Raqqah’s last words as he was dragged away, “I am not The Engineer.”
And who is The Stranger...?
THE STRANGER is a fast paced ‘War on Terror’ thriller with interesting characters, a tightly plotted, tense set up, political intrigue, and an explosive climax but the characters are conflicted, the politics anything but straightforward. There are no goodies and baddies and Simon Conway, a writer with whom I was previously unfamiliar, has delivered a novel that is several steps above the gung-ho, flag-waving thrillers that seem to fill the shelves, much more Le Carre than Clancy.
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