The Girl from Kandahar

In Afghanistan, British secret servicewoman Marcie Brown, posing as the third wife of one of ISAF’s most trusted operatives, is killed in a drone strike. Or at least, that’s what the official report states. Deep inside enemy territory, what remains of her body is deemed irrecoverable. Seven thousand miles away, in Britain, her grieving husband, MI7 Officer Nicholas Fleming, joins a police investigation which stumbles onto an Islamist plot to bomb central London. Handed responsibility for the counter-terrorism initiative, he uncovers evidence that one of the bombers is his wife. By degrees, the utterly unbelievable becomes plausible and, at last, undeniable. Questions such as what really happened to her become academic as love and duty are rendered incompatible. To save the lives of hundreds of innocent people, Fleming must order the destruction of the only woman he has ever loved. To make matters worse, there is evidence that she is slowly recovering her memory … The Girl From Kandahar is a love story played out on both sides of the War on Terror. Its detailed understanding of Pashtun culture and Islam is matched by a corresponding recognition of Western motives and concerns. Above all, it deals with the human side of the conflict: families split, loved ones lost, communities broken, distrust, hostility, grief. Yet its prognosis is far from bleak. In the end, it may be that no ideology is as powerful as the simple truth that our best hope lies in each other.