The Edge of the Machete

This book is written by Abhisar Sharma, a senior anchor in Aajtak who has also won the Ramnath Goenka Indian Express Award. I was the privileged one as I had a chance to meet the author himself before I started reading this book. A  book reading event was organised by West land India and it was a great evening in a fancy restaurant with Abhisar Sharma, fellow bloggers and the good people from Westland India. You can read about it in detail here.

Backdrop–

The Eye of the Predator is the first book of the Author. Edge of the Machete is the second book of the trilogy.  Generally when we read books we don’t know much about the Author or the moments of the story but here I knew it for the good. Reading it became fun because it always brought back the memories of the interaction done with the story creator. I must also appreciate the Author for the amount of knowledge he has about the Af-Pak region,  a few instances he shared with us were very thrilling, maybe this is due to his other interesting role as a journalist.

Cover Page–

A masked terrorist with a gun and the orange-yellow glow of fire conveys it all that it is a hard core tale of chill and thrill. It sends across open invitation to its genre lovers. I am sure the guys would definitely fall for it first than the gals. My husband preferred reading this one before me and definitely above the other romantic tales that I am fond of.

Story line–

The novel is based on the current terror setup in the Af-Pak region. A CIA agent, Jason Wilson is beheaded in front of the camera by Aamir Sherzai, a brutal terrorist of Tehreek-e-Taliban, the Pakistan wing of Taliban. This video of this killing is put online to make mockery of CIA. Ed Gomez, another agent and a close friend of Jason, takes a pledge to eliminate the killer of Jason. To complete this mission he has to change his identity to Safaraz Khan, a self created dreaded terrorist who can infiltrate CIA headquarters and kill 4 agents and then run away to Pakistan.

Sarfaraz Khan had to somehow reach the man behind his friend’s killing and also ascertain the role of Pakistan as an ally in the war against terror. He is able to infiltrate the “The Beast” in Khyber where all the bosses of jihadi world are present to plan a deadliest attack against US interests and the whole western society.

Ed Gomez has to fight an internal battle with Sarfaraz which keeps on bugging him time and again.

There are other two – Shaun Marsh, aka Shahid Khan, a British Muslim confused with his own beliefs with his faith and Rahul Sharma, an Indian journalist, ready to go the extra mile for the want of thrilling story in Afghanistan. These two have other things in common which one will get to know as they read the book.

All three end up in The Beast some way or the other and are confronted with the ongoing Jihadi movement against the West. More than the jihad against the western society, it is the want of power which is keeping these people together for a common cause. But, this was not an easy task to keep all the power heads under one roof and that lately proves to be a unfruitful decision.

Go around–

Abhisar has very effectively unfolded the sudden twists and turns in the book. The language used was very straight forward while describing the brutal ways of torture used and it is surely going to give one goose bumps while reading these. The characters in the book are very neatly described which gives the reader a clear view of each one of them.

The writing style of the Author was very organised. Though the story is complex because it has mention of lots of places and characters but no where did I find myself lost. The flow is good and the story is well paced.

The story was a little lengthy (333 pages) and font size used in the book was a bit small which requires one to keep the eyes glued so as not to lose track.

All in all, the book is worth the time and money and can hold you upright on your toes because of the sensitivity involved in the story. I would recommend it as a movie material. 

Happy Reading!

🙂 🙂 🙂

A special thanks to my hubby for his valuable inputs in this book review.

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