An Act of Kindness

Hakim and Arnold #2

by Barbara Nadel

Lee Arnold and Mumtaz Hakim run a detective agency in London's East End. But their latest case could have devastating consequences.

A new client, Nasreen, has sought Hakim's help. Recently moved to a new house, and with a baby on the way, this should be an exciting time - but Nasreen has made friends in the community that she cannot tell her husband, Abdullah, about. And when a murder takes place close to their home, Nasreen suspects that Abdullah also has something to hide.

This case is a challenge for the agency, but provides a timely warning to Mumtaz - debts spiralling, her life is in danger of spinning out of control.

Both women are on a path towards destruction, as the consequences of ignoring their instincts become ever more dangerous...

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Audiobook, London

352 pages, Paperback

First published July 4, 2013

About the author

Barbara Nadel is an English crime-writer. Many of her books are set in Turkey. Born in the East End of London, Barbara Nadel trained as an actress before becoming a writer. Now writing full-time, she has previously worked as a public relations officer for the National Schizophrenia Fellowship's Good Companion Service and as a mental health advocate for the mentally disordered in a psychiatric hospital. She has also worked with sexually abused teenagers and taught psychology in schools and colleges, and is currently the patron of a charity that cares for those in emotional and mental distress. She has been a regular visitor to Turkey for more than twenty-five years.

Reviews

[Otherwyrld · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second Hakim and Arnold private eye story, set in an East London not a million miles from where I live. In some respects, it's more of the same, with a fairly predictable story, and just a slight edging forward of the relationship between the two main characters.

As with most crime stories, if you get a disparate set of events in the early part of the book you can guarantee that they are all related in some way to each other, and that the story will end up with these unrelated parts coming together to a more-or-less satisfactory ending. In this case, a young pregnant Muslim woman finds a mysterious object hidden behind the paintwork of the house she and her husband are renovating. It's easy to guess that the object holds the secret to the whole story, and that is someone is pregnant in a book, they will go into labour during the final confrontation.

The author illuminates a dark and unpleasant world in this book, that of slum landlords who treat their tenants like dirt, particularly if they are female. As such, this hit a little too close to home and made the book difficult to read. There are some truly vile people in this story, and as is usual in these circumstances it is mostly women who are the victims.

At the end there is some progress with some of the background plots that were introduced in the first book, and there is a way for one of our characters to get out of a very difficult fix, but I am not sure I like these people enough to want to keep reading about them.

[Rachel (not currently receiving notifications) Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

The East End of old collides with the very modern face of the area in a hard hitting follow-up to the excellent debut novel A Private Business, pairing white private investigator Lee Arnold and his Muslim assistant, Mumtaz Hakim. Local boy Lee is East End born and bred and as an ex-soldier, ex-copper the hiring of early thirties widower and headscarf wearing Mumtaz Hakim was always a risk. A year later Mumtaz has more than proved her worth and afforded the Arnold Detective Agency on Green Street, Upton Park a way into the lucrative market in troubled Asian ladies. In the run up to the Olympics which are promising to regenerate the London Borough of Stratford, the realities for many of the residents is very different. Despite all the 'opportunities' and empty promises, life for those who find themselves muddling along on the poverty line is much unchanged and as hard as ever and Barbara Nadel illustrates this perfectly in An Act of Kindness.

When two new clients seek the help of the agency, and specifically Mumtaz she hopes it will provide a welcome distraction from her own problems. Lee is concerned that something serious is worrying her and despite a growing bond he knows that she will be unwilling to disclose her problems. As a proud Muslim and a mother to sixteen year old stepdaughter Shazia, Mumtaz's problems are financial and the inherited debts and hefty mortgage of her dead and abusive husband, Ahmet, has left her at the mercy of the notorious Sheikh clan. However, what Mumtaz and Lee cannot envisage is that the two cases will take them to some very dark places and draw some striking parallels to Mumtaz's own life.

When newlyweds Nasreen and Abdullah Khan bought the house on Strone Road at an auction six weeks ago Abdullah insisted they do the renovation work themselves whilst living with Nasreen's parents. Whilst solicitor Abdullah is at work, pregnant Nasreen goes to the house alone and it is on one of these occasions that she meets and establishes a connection with homeless John Sawyer an ex-soldier who has struggled to come to terms with the horrors he witnessed in Helmand. She opts to keep their meetings secret knowing Abdullah has a jealous streak and will not approve. As Abdullah becomes more controlling and the first seeds of doubt lodge in Nasreen's mind, when John is found murdered the suspicion that her husband is somehow involved sees her seeking the help of Mumtaz. Meanwhile the approach of Ayesha Mirza, a Muslim by marriage with concerns that her sister, Wendy, has been dragged into a prostitution racket by her unscrupulous landlord, Sean Roger's and his brother Marty sees the duo working surveillance, but Lee knows the the notoriously volatile brothers from old and understands what a very serious threat they can pose. As each of the separate investigations unravels the connections become clear and collide in the most explosive and unforeseen way.

Barbara Nadel brilliantly explores Mumtaz's obligations to the Sheikh family and the threat they hold over Shazia and draws parallels with both Nasreen Khan and Wendy Dixon. It is at this point that you are struck by how life isn't that different for Mumtaz, Nasreen or Wendy. Mumtaz recognises the power that husband Abdullah holds over Nasreen who treats her as his property in the way Ahmet did, and similarly the Roger's overt threat to Wendy's daughter, Dolly, replicates that of the Sheikh's to Shazia. Different cultures, different classes yet at the end of the day there is a very circuitous nature to this novel. Barbara Nadel is a realist and she paints a gritty but authentic picture of a London which has evolved. That she does not gloss over the tensions and problems that still trouble those who settle in the area is to her credit; Nadel simply stands back and tells it how it is. An Act of Kindness is a timely reminder that for those at the very bottom of the food chain in a diverse East End, life is as sharp-edged as ever.

At the heart of this series is the realism and depth which Nadel has attributed to both Lee Arnold and Mumtaz Hakim and other recurring characters such as DI Vi Collins and Baharat Huq. Mumtaz is a strong independent woman who covers her head by choice and has a degree in psychology and DI Vi Collins is a feisty no-nonsense East Ender who delivers a brilliant put down! An excellent instalment from a truly innovative series which with each outing becomes more assured. An Act of Kindness is both an entertaining and thought-provoking read. Crime fiction with a social conscience that packs a punch and combines local colour and three-dimensional characters.

The Hakim and Arnold series is one of the most satisfying and truthful narrations on the changes which have occurred in the UK. Nadel takes a big picture view of the changes that have attracted various social demographics to the modern London and provides an insightful look at some of the beliefs of both Islam and Judaism. Barbara Nadel manages to illustrate that it is not religion per se, but the way it is interpreted than is often so divisive. There is a certain irony in that both that to the diverse array of cultures which now occupy the East End, the foreign tongues are the European ones and the changing times has united previous enemies. The areas of tension and the dividing lines between cultures and classes might have altered but the melting pot that is East London remains as combustible as ever.

[Raven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Must admit to having tuned in late to this new crime venture by Barbara Nadel, known for the excellent Turkish Inspector Ikmen series, and having missed the first book A Private Business, featuring PI’s Lee Arnold and Mumtaz Hakim, will seek to make amends with a review of this, the second in the series.

Gravitating around the East End of London in the run-up to the Olympics, I think what struck me most about the book was how issue-based the story was, with a wide-reaching commentary on the social and cultural problems facing normal people scratching out a life in the metropolis. Nadel interweaves these issues, not only into the central murder plot, but also within the lives and back stories of all the main protagonists, notably in her Muslim PI Mumtaz Hakim, a single parent suffocating under the weight of debts left by her late husband, and with the mental scars left by the abuse that she and her step- daughter received at his hands. This story is replicated to some degree in her interaction with Nasreen, a wife not wholly trusting of her own husband, and who strikes up a tentative friendship with street dwelling ex-soldier John, who is later murdered. Nadel deftly illustrates the stresses of these women’s previous and current relationships with secretive and violent men, hemmed in by the constraints of their religious obligations in marriage. We also gain an insight into the abuse of other women, as Nadel highlights such issues as sex trafficking and the difficulties for women trying to raise their families under the constraints of slum landlords and moneylenders. These are debts that can sometimes only be repaid by the cruellest and most demeaning acts possible, and Nadel provides an effective counterpoint throughout against the backdrop of the hope and regeneration bound up in the staging of the Olympics- a renewal that provides little succour in reality for those that lived in its shadow.

Although for my taste I found the plot a little pedestrian, I did read this book at a pace, as the previously mentioned socio-cultural aspects of the book were more than enough to keep my interest, and I did like the little nuggets of interesting facts and observations that Nadel drip-fed throughout. I also took to the central characters of Lee Arnold, the ex-police officer and Mumtaz Hakim, and the respectful parameters of behaviour that defines their relationship both on a personal and professional level. I enjoyed the touches of humour on Arnold’s part especially in relation to Nadel’s portrayal of the nastier characters of the piece and Arnold’s interaction with them, and how her ‘baddies’ were truly despicable and seemingly untouchable from the forces of law and order, personified by feisty DI Vi Collins, who also enjoys a unique relationship with Arnold. Indeed, the natural wit and characterisation of the book along with the more thought-provoking addressing of social and cultural problems, more than made up for any weaknesses that I perceived personally in the plotting.

On the strength of this book, I will most certainly be seeking out A Private Business, to catch up on the beginnings of the partnership of Arnold and Hakim, and would certainly recommend An Act of Kindness for those who like their crime with a little more social conscience, uncovering the reality behind London’s shiny facade.

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite like crime novels as a general rule, but there are sub-genres of crime novels , and some of them I like more than others. I like whodunits best, the mystery sub-genre, where there are several suspects and one has to work out, or guess, who the actual perpetrator was. I also quite like whydunits, the ones that explore criminal motivation, and what leads them to commit a crime.

But the kind I like least are the ones about organised crime, and criminal gangs, and especially the Mafia and similar organisations. I usually try to avoid reading those, or watching films with that theme. And An Act of Kindness starts off as a gangster book. It's set in the East End of London, UK, West Ham country, and it is well-populated with unscrupulous landlords who put the squeeze on people who owe them money. There is no question of exploring motivation here. When I say unscrupulous, I mean people who have no scruples at all. There is no conflict of conscience among this lot. Get in their way and they squash you like an ant, or get one of their employees to do it.

But about halfway through it changes, and turns into a whodunit type of story. Suddenly the threads of all the separate crimes and criminals start coming together, and there is some sort of mystery after all. So it improved as it went along. I found the ending rather unsatisfactory, though.

[Christopher G. Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barbara Nadel has made her international reputation with her Istanbul set Inspector Ikmen Mysteries. What is outstanding about the Istanbul novels is her adroit weaving of cultural attitudes and values into the social and economic world of her characters and her considerable ability to breath life into Istanbul as a city. She makes Istanbul come to life.

It is a different challenge to make Muslim life inside a London come to life. An Act of Kindness rises to his challenge and creates a part of London most of us have never witnessed and have no first-hand knowledge.

In this new mystery series, the stories take place in the marginal neighborhood of East London where immigrants and local poor live. Both communities fall prey to organized criminals who circle like vultures over the vulnerable robbing them of their dignity, respect and security. An Act of Kindness has the same cultural preoccupations as the Inspector Ikmen Mysteries—to open the psychological and emotional arrange of a self-contained community with different traditions, beliefs and attitudes. In the novel, the Muslim worldview—especially the one of Muslim women—seek to find an uneasy co-existence with English values and attitudes. There are compromises, uncertainty, confusion, doubt, and fear written into the lives of the women who form the story.

PI Lee Arnold and his assistant Mumtaz Hakim, a widowed Muslim working mother, work out of an office in East Ham. The private investigation business isn’t making them rich. The Arnold Detective Agency is headed by an ex-cop, and his policeman skills and continued contacts bring a law enforcement structure to the story. The PI office is up a flight of stairs at the back of a rough alley behind Green Street, Upton Park. In the case of Mumtaz Hakim, who after her abusive husband’s death, is saddled with a large mortgage and secretly each month has pawned what remaining items of value she has to meet the payment. Her employer, Lee Arnold plays a smaller role in the overall story—when he appears it is as protector, comforter and advisor.

Mumtaz takes on a new case involving a Muslim woman named Nasreen whose husband Abdullah has received a law degree from the University of Manchester. It appears to be a traditional Muslim marriage. The novel starts with Nasreen discovering an ex-serviceman (he’d served in Afghanistan) living in a wooden shelter in the back garden. Nasreen hasn’t told her husband about the homeless man named John, who she has secretly been giving food. She fears her husband’s wrath. Abdullah, who is easy to anger, has more than his fair share of secrets from his past in Manchester and the place and name of the law firm where he tells his wife that he’s employed.

Abdullah is abusive and controlling, and his wife is afraid of him—and with good reason—he has no hesitation using physical violence. It is her fear of his explosive rages and demands that haunts her throughout the novel. She reaches out to Mumtaz, another Muslim woman, but steps back as her traditional values make it difficult for her to accept that her husband may have secrets of his own about his employment that he wishes to keep from her. Nasreen has a crisis of denial. This is a common link she shares with Mumtaz who is in denial (though for different reasons) about her economic prospects. Only Mumtaz has the perseverance to ultimately break through Nasreen’s failure to see what was in front of her all of the time.

The mystery unfolds as John Sawyer, the ex-vet is murdered, his body was dumped in an adjacent Jewish ceremony, and Abdullah takes a wrecking hammer to the walls of the newly acquired house. He tells his wife not to ask questions. That he’s renovating the house himself to save money. The house holds a crucial secret connected to Abdullah’s history. Each day he arrives back from work and sets to bring down another bit of wall. His wife believes he works as a lawyer for a firm of solicitors. As his entire life is built upon a foundation of lies and deceptions, he may have the right morality for legal work but it does make his biography difficult to take at face value.

As Mumtaz works the Nasreen case, she also has another client who wishes to find out if her sister Wendy Dixon is on the game. The sub-plot opens up the world of powerful and dangerous gangsters who are running a number of illegal rackets in East Ham. Sean Rogers, the head of the local mafia has the police, judges and other powerful people under his thumb. They along with wealthy men attend sex parties that Roberts hosts, supplying the escorts. No one has the courage to stand up to Rogers for fear of the violence that he’s capable of inflicting against anyone challenging his authority.

The central issue is one of coming to terms with cultural identity by Muslims in London. Abdullah’s secrets are caught up with his childhood and the deathbed secrets of his father that haunt him. In seeking to claim his cultural legacy, Abdullah will spare no one and no cost even though it will destroy others.

An Act of Kindness is a parable of chasing dreams of one’s father until they slowly turn into nightmares from which darkness claim the dreamer and all of those around him. The relationship of Nasreen and Mumtaz as Muslim women struggling with abusive husbands and debt sharing a bleak future reveals the emotional lives of culturally displaced women in London. Like a coming across a terrible road accident, your first reaction is to look away, and then you look, and you can stop seeing the pain and suffering.

And you wish the world had a way to sing a lullaby to those like Nasreen caught in the car wreckage of a life, one that comforts those who are inconsolable. Nasreen’s fate, like that of Wendy Dixon, an escort girl working in Sean Rogers’s sexual fantasy world, is determined by men like Abdullah and Rogers. Their fear freezes them. They are in the orbit of men with frightening power and whose careless brutality and violence acts as a gravity, bending, folding, distorting their futures. Finishing the novel, I felt a lingering sorrow, a cry from the heart, as the helplessness overwhelmed and ultimately destroyed the lives of several women.

There is little redemption in An Act of Kindness. Instead, the reader finishes the novel with a sense of real despair as the unfairness of what happened to each of these women was as irreversible and permanent as a cold, unmarked grave.

[Alma (retirement at last) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very gritty storyline, gangster landlords, female trafficking, blackmail, marriage and religion and a search for missing diamonds. What a mix and not forgetting the rather well documented sexual element. All in all a real page turner especially the working chemistry between Arnold and Hakim. Although I didn’t think there were any surprises in the storyline but I will definitely read Nadel’s next Hakim and Arnold novel as I particularly like them as characters.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audiobook

Historical accusations, current underworld deaths, and religious antagonistic behaviour between Muslims and past Jewish,as well as domestic violence and coercion are dealt with in such a way that the plot, has not one stand out plot, several subplots crafted together, that tie up together. While these happen in reality, it seems to be done in a context of time, rather than quick, its done over a longer period, much more investigation over the strands and piecing together

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ordered this on Kindle, somehow I never get to read my Kindle books, and yet, I really enjoy reading Ms. Nadel's stories. Have read several in this series, and they grow on you.

This is book number 2 in the series. A ex police officer has opened his own detective Agency, his right hand lady is of the Muslim faith who is a good kind lady, who has been badly mistreated by her deceased husband, he was also brutal with her step-daughter. She keeps this all to herself, plus that she is being bleed dry by the evil people who killed her husband and who threaten her every month. Even though she is at her wits end, she does not tell her boss, who could help her. She is also very kind to people who come to her for help, she helps a young lady with detective work, who is trying to find out something about the people who use to live in her house. She has married within her faith, but there is something very strange, she thought she had married a young Muslim lawyer, but ... this may not have been so.
Murders, beatings, prostitution, blackmail and torture all mixed up in this British Mystery.

[Rog Harrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a fan of the author's writing and I have read fourteen of her books featuring Inspector Ikmen, a police detective in Istanbul, and three books in this series featuring a small private detective agency in London. I was pleased to finally read this book as I had already read the books before and after this one as well as one of the much later books. As the author has a lot of character development I recommend reading the books in her various series in order.

In this book Mumtaz Hakim is investigating the husband of a woman who is suspicious about his behaviour while Lee Arnold's investigation concerns a husband who is suspicious of his wife. There are some really vicious characters and there are several deaths before the end. As in the first book some of the bad guys evade punishment.

[Miss R Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! Great story-telling

Barbara Nadel is SUCH a good tale teller. She mixes London's multi-cultural society around the 2012 Olympics backdrop. Gangsters, Jews, Muslims, racial prejudice, tarts, human trafficking and more, all combine to make a thrilling mystery for Lee and Mumtaz, PIcs , to investigate.

[Ruth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sadly, I just couldn’t get into this one. It may have been because this is a the second in the series as I wasn’t able to get my hands on the first bad the main protagonists are not curly entrench he’s, I found some parts to be a bit confusing. Unable to the normal crew now but perhaps this will change if u can read the first in the series.

[Jean Walton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to this on audible. Although I still prefer the Inspector Ikmen series, this was an engrossing but rather grim read. It features old style Kray brothers type crime, racial tension and misogyny but I like the unlikely combination of a white agnostic man and a moslem woman working as private investigators.

[Tolkien InMySleep · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mumtaz Hakim and Lee Arnold are rapidly becoming one of my favourite detective couples. The world they live in is brutal, often sordid and depressing, but the affection and humanity the main characters show to the victims, and to each other, make these stories an uplifting read.

[Christine Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know why this author is not more popular. I have long been a fan of the Inspector Ikmen series and this is just as good.

[Tessa Buckley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked the idea of a Muslim woman working as a private detective – it makes a change from the usual cynical, down-at-heel male PI (although there is one of them as well). The setting –East London – and the period – just prior to the London Olympics – are perfectly evoked. There is a selection of disparate and believable characters to keep you interested and towards the end there are at least three twists which I didn’t see coming, always a bonus. I'm looking forward to the next one in the series.

[Vanessab · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are dark books dealing with communities where criminal gangs seem to wield all the power over ordinary people. It's good to see a woman and particularly a Muslim woman as a main protagonist. However, I should like to see more representation of Muslim families who are not dominated by violent men. I think it is a wasted opportunity with this character. I can see that the author is trying to create a narrative that connects several books in the series, but I think we need positive images as well. Her story could have been one that she is investigating.

[Ann Tonks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been waiting to read on of this new series based in London after all Nadel's wonderful stories set in Istanbul and this didn't disappoint - although it is deeply depressing to read of endless badness. Some great characters and the PI team of Mumtaz Hakim and Lee Arnold is great.

[Abs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice read about society and the ways of east London. Wasnt too convinced with parts of the story and character integration.

[Bookmaniac70 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Барбара Нейдъл е върхът! Няма такова криминале! Последните 50 страници прочетох с пресъхнала уста от напрежение какво ще се случи до края! :-))

[Mindy · Rating 1 out of 5]

If the transphobic and sex worker phobic language was taken out, and the lack of understanding of the effect of budget cuts on people with disabilities fixed then this would be a great book.

[Elisabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three interwoven stories. Very well done. East Asian Muslim culture, criminal London gangs, ex-cop PI. Second in this series, and I think stronger than the first one.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

I especially liked the cultural aspects of the book as well as the crime elements. I like the characters so I'll read the next one in the series to see where the author is going with it.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this new series. I am waiting impatiently for more

[Wilde Sky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Detectives investigate when a murder victim is found in a cemetery.

I found this book confusing - I finished reading it but none of it remained with me.

[WR · Rating 3 out of 5]

The plot was quite predictable, and the pacing was slow. Not sure I’ll continue this series, not that I’ve tried two books and found them so so.