The Thief and the Vizier
Baghdad, AD 796. In the bustling multicultural capital of the Abassid caliphate, a petty thief called Nasir steals some rubies and finds himself embroiled in political plots and criminal conspiracies. On the run with his not-so-trusty sidekick Hasan, he must protect his sister from threats of violence by retrieving some stolen letters. It is a perilous mission that leads our reluctant hero into increasingly dangerous situations.
The well-realised period setting and lively tongue-in-cheek style of this tale will feel familiar to fans of the “Thousand and One Nights” tradition, although Whinnett steers clear of magical elements. First-person narration lends the adventure a vibrant immediacy, and you can’t help but sympathise with luckless Nasir in his ever-worsening plight. The twists and turns of the plot can seem a tad repetitive and the villains are perhaps a little one-dimensional, but for me the entertaining set-piece scenes are more than enough to counterbalance those tendencies. Suspense and intrigue are skilfully managed through a gradual reveal of conspiratorial complexities, building to a climax that is satisfyingly dramatic without overstretching our credulity.
Better proofreading should have caught the frequent missing words and persistent spelling errors (e.g., ‘lead’ for ‘led’), but they are mostly minor, and the relentless pace of the story is sufficient to maintain momentum through such potential distractions. Readers of a squeamish disposition should note there are some graphic descriptions of violence. Despite these caveats, however, I do not hesitate to recommend this hugely enjoyable escapade.
