ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Omar Shahid Hamid has been a police officer for 20 years. As part of the Sindh Police’s Counterterrorism department, he has survived being ambushed by gangsters, implicated by colleagues in a false case, and, as CID chief, barely escaped the bombing of his office by the Pakistani Taliban. In 2011, following an attack on his offices by the Pakistani Taliban, he took a five-year sabbatical to write books and worked as a political risk consultant. In 2016, Omar returned to active duty as a counterterrorism officer. He has been widely quoted and regularly featured in several publications including The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Times, Le Monde, Reuters, CNN and BBC.

His first novel, The Prisoner (2013), was longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2015 and is now being adapted for a feature film. His second novel The Spinner’s Tale (2015) won the 2016 Karachi Literature Festival Prize. He received the award again for his third novel The Party Worker (2017) at the Karachi Literature Festival in 2018 which is now being adapted for a TV series. His fourth novel, The Fix, explored the arcane world of cricket match-fixing. Betrayal is his fifth novel.