Abir Mukherjee, a The Times bestselling author who is renowned for his Wyndham & Banerjee series set in Colonial India in the early 20th century, has taken a bold leap into contemporary settings with his latest novel Hunted (Mulholland Books/Hachette Book Group, 2024). Known for his intricate plots and richly detailed historical settings, Mukherjee brings these skills to bear on 21st century North America.
Mukherjee, who was born in London, raised in Scotland, and has Bengali heritage, had a successful career as an accountant before turning to writing. His debut novel A Rising Man won the Harvill Secker/Daily Telegraph crime writing competition, and was shortlisted for several awards. In an exclusive interview with SesayArts Magazine, ahead of his anticipated panel at MOTIVE Crime and Mystery Festival in Toronto, Mukherjee opened up about his inspirations, challenges, and the thematic depth of his new edge-of-your-seat novel.
For starters, Mukherjee explains that his move from historical fiction to a contemporary thriller was not a whimsical or random move: it was a conscious effort to stretch his creative boundaries: “The Wyndham & Banerjee series has been wonderful to write, and I’m always amazed at how many people have taken it to their hearts. But after writing five of the series in a row, I really wanted to try something different. I’m still (touch wood) in the early stages of my career, and it’s important to me that I push myself further with every book I write.” Eager to explore, now felt like a good time to “branch out into something quite different – a pacy thriller set in the present day and on the other side of the world from my other books.”
The story of Hunted is an intricate tale with a sprawling cast. It begins a week before the US presidential elections, when a bomb explodes in a Los Angeles shopping mall, killing 65 people. In London, armed police arrest Sajid Khan at Heathrow Airport because they suspect his daughter Aliyah, who entered the USA with the suicide bomber, is plotting another attack. Then Carrie, a woman who has traveled from the USA, shows up at Sajid’s door, claiming that Aliyah is with her son Greg. So together, Sajid and Carrie fly to the US – racing against law enforcement and their own desperation to find their children and prevent a catastrophic attack. Meanwhile, FBI Special Agent Shreya Mistry, who is leading the investigation and closing in on the fugitives, begins to uncover a more complex and sinister conspiracy.
Taking on a modern-day thriller proved to be “energising, at least at first,” smiles Mukherjee, “until I realised just how tough it would be to write a thriller that I could be proud of.” In the end, Hunted took him four years to get right. This was substantially longer than he had expected, but all of the extra time and effort were necessary: “I learned an awful lot during that time!”
In Hunted, Mukherjee weaves together themes of political populism, economic decay, racism, and the fragility of democracy to create a narrative that feels both urgent and reflective. His motivation? Anger and concern about the current global political climate. “Most of my writing originates from a position of anger,” he confesses. “I write about things that upset me, things about the world that concern me. It’s what gives me the energy to write. If I don’t feel strongly about something, then I won’t have the determination to write a hundred thousand words about it.” In this vein, even some of his historical novels have been allegories for contemporary phenomena. But for the last few years, he has been alarmed by the rise of populism, not just in America and Britain, but in Europe, South America, and India: “I’m angered by the current state of things, where carpetbaggers and snake oil salesmen pitch simplistic solutions to complex problems – always punching down, always trading on hate and bigotry. And their message is seductive. It scares me.”
Hunted features a deliberately diverse cast, including an FBI agent, a Muslim teen, a Bangladeshi-British father, and an Afghanistan veteran. Mukherjee has a particular fondness for Sajid Khan, the father of the missing girl Aliyah: “Sajid is my favourite character, mainly because his life and his experience are the closest to mine. He’s about my age, and is a Bangladeshi man living in the East End of London. My parents came from just across the border – from West Bengal in India – and share much of their culture with him. I, too, lived in the East End for many years, so I feel I have walked in his shoes. Of the three characters from whose viewpoints the story is told, his was the first voice that came together.”
At the other extreme, the most challenging character to write was Shreya the FBI agent: “She’s neurodivergent, rubs people up the wrong way, and is essentially a misfit, both in her professional and personal life. I wanted to write a neurodivergent character because my elder son is on the autism spectrum. I wanted to represent people like him. Getting her right, though, was difficult.”
Also difficult was the broader task of integrating a high-octane plot with deep character development and coherent storytelling: “One of the hardest things about writing a thriller – a good one anyway – is getting that balance between plot and character development. To do this, I had to first learn how to write a thriller – a real thriller, which is quite different from the historical fiction I’d been writing. I read widely and found that you need to be brave. You need to push your characters to the limit and dial the action up to eleven. Once I figured that out, the plot started to come together.”
But at the same time, the characters – like real people – “needed to suffer and grow and learn through the book. That’s difficult when the plot is moving at 100mph,” he smiles. “But there are slower chapters, quieter chapters, and that is where the characters shine. It took a lot of drafting and redrafting to get right.” His first drafts were plot-heavy, then once the plot was right, he moved on to the characters, needing a separate draft to get each of the three main characters right.
The core elements that unite the characters and plot of Hunted—conspiracy, manipulation, heroism, and the parent-child bond—are intricately linked, and all resonate strongly for Mukherjee: “The truth is, both the manipulation and radicalisation, and the parent-child bond are vitally important to me. I am scared about radicalisation – be that fundamentalist Islam, Hinduism or Christianity. I’m also scared of secular radicalisation in the form of populism, which to me is just fascism-lite”. And this fear strikes at a vulnerable underbelly: “As a parent, I’m scared that I won’t be able to protect my children in a world that grows tougher and more dangerous by the day. In a sense, these things are all linked. My fears about the world translate into fears for my children.”
Switching from his fears to his hopes for Hunted, Mukherjee expresses a simple yet profound wish: “I just want people to read it and to enjoy it. And I hope that they’ll see beyond the thrills and spills, and maybe get a deeper insight into people they may have been taught to hate, but who really have more in common with them than they think.”
In the meantime, Mukherjee plans to continue exploring new terrains and pushing the boundaries of his storytelling craft. But what about that beloved historical novel series?
“Rest assured,” he promises with a smile. “There’ll be a new Wyndham & Banerjee novel out next year.”
See Mukherjee at the MOTIVE, Crime & Mystery Festival in Toronto on June 8 and 9, 2024. Visit festivalofauthors.ca for tickets.
© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2024
