Book Review | The Party Worker

The official Synopsis:

Bestselling author Omar Shahid Hamid’s third and most chilling novel yet.

A burnt out New York cop; an eighty-year-old Parsi sitting in a decaying Karachi mansion; a hitman whose days are numbered; a journalist who dreams of the big time.

When a Jewish woman is killed on the steps of the Natural History Museum in New York, disparate lives are thrown together for one purpose: to bring about the downfall of the Don, the uncrowned king of Karachi.

The Party Worker explores the Machiavellian politics of Pakistan’s busiest city, where friends come bearing bullets, and enemies can wait patiently for decades before striking.
Gritty, disturbing, and compelling, this is Omar Shahid Hamid at his best.

Omar Shahid Hamid has been a police officer in Pakistan for sixteen years and is a senior member of the Karachi Police’s Counter Terrorism Department. In 2011, following an attack on his offices by the Pakistani Taliban, he took a five-year sabbatical to write books and worked as a political risk consultant. He has been widely quoted and regularly featured in major news outlets like The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Times, Le Monde, DW, Bloomberg, Reuters, CNN, BBC and NPR. His first novel, The Prisoner (2013), was longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2015 and is now being adapted for a feature film. His second novel is The Spinner’s Tale (2015). In 2016, Omar returned to active duty as a Counter Terrorism Officer.

My Two Cents:

 

Omar Shahid Hamid is maturing into a superb writer with only his third novel!

With his in depth knowledge of the local and cultural norms he is able to write content that is close to reality and very believable. Its a pleasure to read his books and makes me at yearn for more!

His style of telling the story is very intriguing and doesnt give the climax away. However in this edition the climax has been sort of hurried which takes the impact out of it.

His books are also incredibly well researched, which one can associate to his background. The characters are so close to reality that you can easily associate with them which helps add more weight to the story.

For a Pakistani reader his books are a great source of entertainment and thus highly recommended.

Link to Goodreads: The Party Worker