Books & more: On the way to the afterlife.

He's one who's gone: Gent, a young German who joined the Islamic State as a convert and volunteer. So far, so tragic. But what suddenly makes him a topic: he contacts his parents from Syria and wants to...leave? This sets the German intelligence services in motion, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Intelligence Service, panic breaks out in the anti-terrorism center in Berlin. Panic also at a program for defectors that is taking care of the parents and among journalists who want to simultaneously bring a story about the German radical in the Islamic State. And everyone is interconnected: especially the anti-terrorism center is surprisingly leaky towards the press, who in turn wants a great story. The boy in Raqqa is ultimately a pawn – also of the Islamic State with its intelligence service.

Yassin Musharbash's thriller plays with an extremely current topic with a lot of insider knowledge. No wonder, the German journalist with Jordanian roots is an Islamic scholar and has worked for "Der Spiegel" – in 2006 he published a solid non-fiction book about "The New Al-Qaeda". He also seems to know the Office for the Protection of the Constitution very well. And he has worked as a researcher for John le Carré, about whose excellent thrillers in the intelligence milieu we don't need to tell you anything. These background experiences combined in Musharbash's thriller create an extremely complex plot, which allows for many insights into various milieus – intelligence services, Salafists, journalists, defector support and IS – that seem extremely coherent. And even if it's not a non-fiction book: Musharbash simply offers an extremely good thriller. Worth reading!

"Beyond: Thriller" by Yassin Musharbash, Kiwi Verlag 2017, 320 pages, Euro 14.99,– (also available on Kindle)