Next time I'll write a book about an author who wins the lottery!

Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year winner Abir Mukherjee on watching events in his prescient fictional thriller Hunted come true... including an assassination attempt on a US presidential candidate

- By Matt Nixson and Jon Coates

ABIR Mukherjee is marvelling at how his gripping thriller about the rise of political extremism, set against the backdrop of a highly divisive US election and featuring an assassination bid on a presidential candidate, predicted real-life events.

"I wanted to highlight what was happening in that election — or what I imagined would be happening," he explains. "Unfortunately, so much of that has come true and that’s partly why the book resonates. Given my powers of prognostication, maybe next time I’ll write a book about an author who wins the lottery!"

The book he began in 2019 and spent a “tough” four years writing, Hunted, came full circle on Thursday night when it was crowned Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year at the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate. It was his fourth time on its shortlist.

Speaking at the world-famous festival, supported by the Express, Abir, 51 — previously best known for his Raj-era, Calcutta-set Wyndham and Banerjee crime novels — admitted writing Hunted had been a huge risk. “I'd written five books and I’d had these two voices in my head for eight or nine years, and I wanted to do something different,” he continues.

“All my books tend to spring from a position of anger — when there’s something I need to write about and get off my chest.

“I’ve generally done that through allegory because those previous books have been set in the past. But this issue of radicalisation was something that I thought was urgent and contemporary, and I wanted to write about it as a warning.”

However, the former City accountant admitted: “I had my spreadsheet about how long I could last without a proper job and had it down as two years.

“There were times I thought I might have to take up another job at some point but — touch wood — it’s been worth it.”