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Zero Point
Malik Jahangir, the man who would be Prime Minister of Pakistan, is dead. Assassinated during a public rally at the peak of his election campaign. Dr. Kamran Haider, a brilliant trauma surgeon, and his accidental partner Sana Aziz, a feisty female reporter, are unwittingly caught in a cat and mouse game with a ruthless assassin who was brought up in a missionary orphanage in the Bronx. Caught between the demons that have haunted him all his life, and the unfamiliar sights and sounds of the street of Pakistans capitol, he hunts the two people who have the information to prove that assassination of Malik Jahangir may have motives beyond local politics and religious fundamentalism. As the story unfolds, characters in Pakistani and American politics emerge, revealing a conspiracy that involves political ambitions, regional dominance and motives rooted in a race for the natural resources of the region.
356 pages, Paperback
First published July 21, 2011
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October 23, 2011
A New Novelist Unravels Cultural Idiosyncracies in an Immensely Fine Read
Wasique Mirza is a Physician who has ome of the gifts of the other physician writers of history: Anton Chekhov, W. Somerset Maugham, Amitabh Mitra, Khaled Hosseini, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Michael Crichton to name only a few. While each of these physician writers approached different subject than does Mirza, each has that something in common trait of being able to take a clinical look at a story, providing all the investigatory elements required from a physician's mind to make a diagnosis, apply those observations to create characters who are completely fleshed out, providing a sense of awe at observation of human behavior, and finding a manner to bring a case to a close having explored every manifestation of that 'patient'.
Mirza's story in ZERO POINT involves a tale of intrigue that undermines the political and human differences between two countries - Pakistan and the United States. He spins his tale of the assassination of the incipient Prime Minister of Pakistan, involves a trauma surgeon in the investigation of the assassin who is an abused victim of a orphanage childhood in America and in unravelling the many plots and subplots in this back and forth the author proves his ability to create passionate scenes as well as gripping episodes that not only resolve the mystery of the assassination but at the same time unveils the bilateral wedges of conspiracy and shaded misunderstanding in a way that adds to a suspenseful tale a fully realized insight into the qualities of politics and beliefs between the West and the Middle East that provide the reader with more information than any journalist has been able to provide.
Mirza's technique of creating short chapters, each with an assigned time and place, makes reading this book propulsive. Far too many authors are not that considerate of the reader: Mirza uses the strange Pakistani names in order to keep the story bilaterally competent but at the same time he pauses here and there to explain traits and traditions of a country too few of us understand so that by novel's end we are left with the sense of recognition of otherwise mysterious customs we have not to this point been privy. A very simple example follows: 'Marriage ceremonies in Pakistan are a colorful, loud, and elaborate events spanning several days, not counting the weeks of preparation along with song and dance gatherings that may begin as early as two months before the actual ceremony. Despite being mostly considered a woman's thing, men are always around, partly as spectators and partly as heavy lifters for all the manual work. These ceremonies are a seamless combination of Muslim traditions decorated with rituals originating in Hindu customs, a natural consequence of their thirteen centuries of co-existence in South Asia.' But in this example of Mirza's writing the reader is gradually absorbed into the milieu of the intrigues and the history of the country that is to follow as the story develops.
ZERO POINT is a story waiting to become a film: the title can be considered to fall into the definition 'the location of the center of a burst of a nuclear weapon at the instant of detonation'. And yes, it is that tense a story. The author has provided all of the elements for adapting a tense thriller into a richly colorful tapestry on which his palpably lifelike characters he has created play out a story that will keep the reader on seat's edge while at the same time teaching us all about a portion of the world we need desperately to understand if we all are to live together in peace. Dr. Mizra joins the ranks of contemporary novelists whose insight is certainly heightened by his medically trained synapses!
Grady Harp
Wasique Mirza is a Physician who has ome of the gifts of the other physician writers of history: Anton Chekhov, W. Somerset Maugham, Amitabh Mitra, Khaled Hosseini, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Michael Crichton to name only a few. While each of these physician writers approached different subject than does Mirza, each has that something in common trait of being able to take a clinical look at a story, providing all the investigatory elements required from a physician's mind to make a diagnosis, apply those observations to create characters who are completely fleshed out, providing a sense of awe at observation of human behavior, and finding a manner to bring a case to a close having explored every manifestation of that 'patient'.
Mirza's story in ZERO POINT involves a tale of intrigue that undermines the political and human differences between two countries - Pakistan and the United States. He spins his tale of the assassination of the incipient Prime Minister of Pakistan, involves a trauma surgeon in the investigation of the assassin who is an abused victim of a orphanage childhood in America and in unravelling the many plots and subplots in this back and forth the author proves his ability to create passionate scenes as well as gripping episodes that not only resolve the mystery of the assassination but at the same time unveils the bilateral wedges of conspiracy and shaded misunderstanding in a way that adds to a suspenseful tale a fully realized insight into the qualities of politics and beliefs between the West and the Middle East that provide the reader with more information than any journalist has been able to provide.
Mirza's technique of creating short chapters, each with an assigned time and place, makes reading this book propulsive. Far too many authors are not that considerate of the reader: Mirza uses the strange Pakistani names in order to keep the story bilaterally competent but at the same time he pauses here and there to explain traits and traditions of a country too few of us understand so that by novel's end we are left with the sense of recognition of otherwise mysterious customs we have not to this point been privy. A very simple example follows: 'Marriage ceremonies in Pakistan are a colorful, loud, and elaborate events spanning several days, not counting the weeks of preparation along with song and dance gatherings that may begin as early as two months before the actual ceremony. Despite being mostly considered a woman's thing, men are always around, partly as spectators and partly as heavy lifters for all the manual work. These ceremonies are a seamless combination of Muslim traditions decorated with rituals originating in Hindu customs, a natural consequence of their thirteen centuries of co-existence in South Asia.' But in this example of Mirza's writing the reader is gradually absorbed into the milieu of the intrigues and the history of the country that is to follow as the story develops.
ZERO POINT is a story waiting to become a film: the title can be considered to fall into the definition 'the location of the center of a burst of a nuclear weapon at the instant of detonation'. And yes, it is that tense a story. The author has provided all of the elements for adapting a tense thriller into a richly colorful tapestry on which his palpably lifelike characters he has created play out a story that will keep the reader on seat's edge while at the same time teaching us all about a portion of the world we need desperately to understand if we all are to live together in peace. Dr. Mizra joins the ranks of contemporary novelists whose insight is certainly heightened by his medically trained synapses!
Grady Harp
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