The Prisoner
SynopsisPlot
An American journalist has been kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan, days before the American president is due to visit. Those responsible have promised to execute him on video on Christmas Day. With no other leads, Constantine D’Souza, a Christian police officer, must get his former colleague Akbar Khan, a rogue cop imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, to help track down the journalist. But to do so, he has to navigate the streets of Karachi, where police corruption is a way of life and political motives are never what they seem. Caught between the United Frontthe militant ruling partyand the Pakistani Intelligence Agencies, D’Souza is in a race against time to save a man’s life and the honor of the nation.
Story
About this book
An American journalist is kidnapped in Karachi just days before the American president is scheduled to visit Pakistan. His captors have set a deadline: they will execute him on video on Christmas Day. With no other leads, the task of finding him falls to Constantine D'Souza, a Christian police officer working in a city where police corruption is routine and political loyalties shift without warning.
D'Souza's only real option is to enlist Akbar Khan, a former colleague now locked up for a crime he did not commit. Khan is a rogue cop with deep knowledge of Karachi's underworld, but getting his cooperation means entering a tangle of competing interests. The militant ruling party, known as the United Front, and the Pakistani Intelligence Agencies each have their own agendas, and D'Souza finds himself caught between them as the deadline closes in.
Omar Shahid Hamid, himself a police officer in Karachi, draws the novel from events with real-world parallels. The story is set against a landscape where extremism and institutional corruption overlap, and where the boundaries between law enforcement and criminality are difficult to locate. The pressure on D'Souza is both personal and national, with lives and diplomatic consequences at stake.
