Ali Azeem is a successful Mumbai wedding photographer, but, to his worried Ma, his life will only begin when he marries the right Ismaili Muslim girl. However, on his first arranged meeting with pretty and reserved Maryam Khan, the daughter of New York real-estate tycoon Abbas Khan, Ali is attracted, not to Maryam, but to her divorced older sister, the sensuous and mercurial Farhan. Still, because of his father’s financial difficulties, Ali agrees to the match with Maryam. After the wedding (a marathon, multiday affair vividly described), the newlyweds move to Manhattan, and Ali finds himself in a glamorous world of money, power, and prestige. But the naive bridegroom soon learns that beneath the glittering surface lie dark family secrets. Farhan, with whom Ali has embarked on a torrid affair, warns him against her domineering father: “Papa is a monster.” What is Abbas’s connection to the serial murders of young Indian women in Queens, as Farhan implies? Shifting between Ali’s first-person narrative and Farhan’s diary entries, Ahmad skillfully builds page-turning suspense with carefully plotted twists and red herrings that keep readers guessing until the chilling conclusion. His exceptional thriller is also a layered portrait of an immigrant family that has made it big in America and the moral costs paid for this success. With rich character development (Farhan is larger than life) and emotional storytelling, it’s hard to believe this is a first novel.
