Book Review: Almost Surely Dead by Amina Akhtar

Dunia Ahmed, like many other single New Yorkers her age, looks forward every morning to the mild flirtation she has going on with a cute guy who happens to take the same subway line as she does into work. Mostly, they just smile hello at each other, so the last thing she expects is for him to suddenly grab her one day and try to throw her under the wheels of an oncoming train. When his efforts are stopped due to the intervention of bystanders, he flings himself under the train instead. 

Dunia is shaken to her core. Her interactions with her would-be murderer were always positive up until that morning and had been a small spark of happiness after the death of her mother and her subsequent breakup with her fiancé. The NYPD, with Detective Alvarez heading her case, takes the incident seriously and finds that the dead man had an even greater interest in her than she’d ever imagined.

Having a stalker would be bad enough, but when more attempts are made on her life, both Dunia and the NYPD are on high alert for the possibility of something even worse. Who would possibly want to harm a mild-mannered pharmacist like herself? When Dunia subsequently disappears, her case captures the public imagination, with a hit podcast leading the charge in asking questions of the people involved:

DANIELLE MCGUIRE: Did you think anything about her background was a factor here?

 

DETECTIVE ALVAREZ: Her background?

 

AMANDA ROBERTS: Dunia was Muslim, correct? Was there any investigation into that part of her life?

 

DETECTIVE ALVAREZ: Her religion wasn’t relevant to the case.

 

DANIELLE MCGUIRE: But she had some beliefs in the supernatural that some people have suggested explain things, or at least her behavior.

 

DETECTIVE ALVAREZ: I investigate people, crimes, not ghost stories.

While the good detective focuses on facts, Dunia herself–prior to her disappearance–can’t help but wonder whether the childhood legends that her father had happily relayed to her, despite her mother’s disapproval, were more than just fiction. Dunia has long been disconnected from her cultural background, but the inexplicable visions that have been accompanying the attempts on her life hearken back to some of her father’s bedtime stories. When she gets the opportunity to learn more from a family friend, she’s initially relieved…until she discovers the extent to which so many of the people she’s trusted have been lying to her about almost everything.

An excellent blend of new media crime thriller with paranormal elements based on Pakistani-Muslim cultural beliefs, Almost Surely Dead cleverly skewers so much of modern American life. Amina Akhtar vividly details many of the inescapable exasperations of contemporary living, from disingenuously rapacious podcasters to the unending complexities of modern romance. Dunia’s frustrations with work and her love life and just trying to survive in the 21st-century feel very relatable, even as the frissons of horror–from both mundane criminals and the supernatural–elevate her story to another level of sophisticated entertainment.

But it was Dunia’s fraught relationship with her deceased mother that really spoke to me, as she candidly narrates their difficult past:

[O]nce I got engaged, it was as if I had become her perfect child. She started doting on me in ways she never had before. Wanting to FaceTime with me and help me pick out shaadi clothes. This all sent me into fits of panic. I think I preferred being ignored. I knew how to navigate that.

 

I can’t say I missed my mom. Not exactly. I loved her, of course, But I couldn’t tell you if she felt the same. It was complicated. She loved [my sister] Nadia, though. So at least I witnessed her being an amazing mother to someone. Me? I was the leftover, the forgotten. I was the child who should have had the grace to die along with my father.

I loved Ms Akhtar’s previous novel, Kismet, and continue to be impressed by her depictions of American women of Muslim descent doing their best to juggle the many demands placed on us by family and society. She continues to masterfully blend chillingly realistic tales of criminal mischief with just the right amount of the otherworldly, making for absorbing, highly entertaining stories that are nearly impossible to put down.