THE SNARES

The recently appointed deputy director of a new U.S. intelligence agency finds himself swept into the dark corners of anti-terrorism policy—with dire personal and professional consequences.

A deputy assistant attorney general under George W. Bush, Neel Chima is living the good life when he gets a phone call from a mysterious CIA official offering him the job. Neel has a loving wife, two adorable kids, and a house paid for by his rich father-in-law. But the lure of an important post at the Freedom Center, which runs parallel to the CIA in targeting suspected terrorists, is too much to resist. A Punjabi American who has never recovered from being called a dothead by the "fresh-faced white dudes" he served with in the Navy, he is eager to prove himself "as goddamned American" as anyone. After innocents in a Pakistani tribal region are mistakenly killed in a drone attack based on his cold analysis, his superiors convince him it’s all part of the job—that “the beauty of war by data is that it takes the moral question out of the discourse.” But following an FBI investigation into his drunken mishandling of top security papers during a trip to Thailand, he’s secretly pressured into targeting an outspoken young Muslim in Brooklyn and his life begins to implode. Was this all part of a plan? Was he set up as a patsy from the start? The tension never lets up in Grewal-Kök’s gripping first novel, which exposes a system that will always compromise its moral code. Neel, who has lived his life coping with his feelings of “otherness” by diminishing his commitment to family and friends, discovers his own moral code too late.

A terrific debut that finds new dimensions in the intelligence thriller.