Honor [Kindle Edition]

Honor is a brilliant read - and quietly clever too. The fast-moving plot will certainly appeal to thriller devotees - it's a page turner and I defy anyone to read the opening chapter and not want to read on - and yet it's unique in its treatment, with a storyline, characters and settings to appeal to a much wider audience than just thriller fans. The wonderful pace is aided by clean and spare prose, but with delicious playful touches to the language that lift it above and beyond other books in the genre. There is a lot of wit here and it is this, and the pace, which prevent the book's subject matter from bogging the reader down in *issues*.

Short punchy chapters, several intermingling story strands, and a fabulous cast of characters populate an involving story about an honor killing in a western consumerist setting - who is the oppressor? Who is the oppressed? What exactly is honor? The story moves briskly along with a supple use of language and glorious black humor, flitting between fundamentalists with murderous intent, advertising executives with one eye on the bottom line and one scouting for the next bandwagon, and bored aristocratic wives with a penchant for rolling in the hay...

You'll finish this book thinking you've read a great romping thriller. But then you'll realise you read something far more than that - you read an extremely clever subtle observation of the world in which we live, where norms are learned and the lines drawn constituting Right and Wrong are not static, nor absolute.

A cracking read & top marks from me.