Hakim and Arnold Books
It is London 2012 and Stratford in the East End is at the centre of the world. But next to the Olympic Park are some of the poorest and most crime-ridden streets in the city. PI Lee Arnold and his assistant, Mumtaz Hakim, run a detective agency in a community fraught with conflict and tension. Approached by a frightened woman, they start to investigate her stalker. But soon their enquiries turn in a far more sinister direction.
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...
Ex-soldier Lee Arnold and his Muslim assistant Mumtaz Hakim run a detective agency in London’s ethnically diverse, crime-ridden East End. Mumtaz is approached by an Egyptian woman, Salwa, whose husband is in Belmarsh on terrorism charges. Salwa convinces Mumtaz of her husband’s innocence and persuades her to go undercover to prove it. But Salwa is not what she seems. Trapped in an old tunnel that leads to the London docks, will Mumtaz escape with her life?
Private investigator and ex-soldier Lee Arnold and superintendent Paul Venus are by no means friends, but when Venus' son Harry is kidnapped and ransom demands arrive from an address in Arnold's patch in east London, the superintendent doesn't know who else to turn to. Arnold and his partner Mumtaz Hakim soon find themselves chasing leads into several of the East End's uneasily coexisting communities. Mumtaz uncovers a link to one of the area's powerful Bangladeshi families, whose property empire has always seemed suspicious, while Arnold suspects the involvement of more old-fashioned East End gangsters, and wonders if some of the nastier rumours about Venus himself might be true. And neither Mumtaz nor Lee like the look of the children of the super-rich, arriving in droves in the trendy parts of Hoxton and Shoreditch and living in luxury just a stone's throw from grinding urban poverty. The truth, however, is stranger and more dangerous than either Arnold or Hakim imagine. Enough Rope is a powerful and thrilling novel of London's ever-evolving dark side.
A friend from the past asks for private investigator Lee Arnold’s help in tracing his son: Fayyad al’Barri was last thought to be in Syria having embraced radical Islam. But a cryptic message has prompted his family to believe Fayyad has had a change of heart and is searching for a way back home. With fellow investigator Mumtaz Hakim’s help, they might be able to establish contact. From the bright lights of the Western world, to shady boxing clubs and murky online jihadist recruitment, and while violence erupts close to home, Mumtaz and Lee are on an unknown path into the mind of a terrorist, journeying closer to danger than they ever imagined.
Irving Levy is a man with few roots and, now that he is terminally ill, is anxious to find anyone to whom he can leave his considerable property. When he learns that there may be more to the disappearance of his younger sister, who disappeared when she was a baby, he engages the services of Hakim and Arnold to investigate. Unwittingly in mortal danger, the private detectives and Levy enter the world of Barking Park Fair and the secrets its brightly coloured attractions conceal. Secrets that lead them not just back to a crime committed in 1963, but to the chaotic world of post-war Europe where few people were what they seemed.
Ever since it was built in 1912, Woolwich Foot Tunnel has been the subject of rumour and speculation. Running underneath the Thames it connects north and south London, and in the hot summer of 1976, when young John Saunders apparently entered the Tunnel and disappeared on his way to his sister’s house, it was a grim and frightening place. John was never seen again until he re-emerged forty-two years later, complete with an American accent. Happy to submit to the DNA testing his sister Brenda demands, this man is definitely John Saunders, but when nothing that he tells Brenda rings true, she decides to enlist the services of private investigators Mumtaz Hakim and Lee Arnold to try and unravel the mystery of where he has been and what has prompted his return.
London, December 2019. Two young boys, Habib and Loz, are trying their luck at selling knock-off pain remedies to pensioners. But they are troubled by an encounter with a potential elderly customer and a young man with a blood-smeared face. Mumtaz Hakim wants to help if she and her partner Lee Arnold can, even though there's no way their detective agency could reasonably charge the boys. While they set about uncovering the truth behind the odd situation in the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral, they find themselves drawn into a gruesome investigation involving an old man and a newborn baby.