Private India.

Private India By Ashwin Sanghi & James Patterson. I am not at all good at review because I am that guy who doesn't like to sway away from the technicality or normalcy, or something like that which ever makes sense.

Genre : Suspense, Thriller, Fiction

Rating : 2.5 / 5. 

What ? 

What is this book about? It is about a person with a Vendetta, seeking revenge by killing people while a team of Professional Investigators try to solve the mystery of who was committing all these murders in the city of Mumbai. Not only is someone on a rampage killing people, there is also a bomb blast by the Islamic liberator who is influenced in his childhood about the same and angered by the way people were treating their community. It does bring up an intriguing web of connection linking almost every character portrayed in the novel and the killer has some or the other link to most of the characters. It is a nicely weaved story, a gripping one as well. No wonder I dozed off to sleep for the last couple of days while reading this book. The excitement and the enthusiasm slowly dies out the killer is slowly revealed in the end of the book.

What put me off? 

The whole idea of the story was gripping and the suspense was steady till the last hundred pages or so when the killer is slowly revealed. The reason for committing murders is reasonable but for that what the person in question does is a little not-so-ordinary . If that were the case assuming that people would to that extremes to seek revenge, but the reply after getting caught puts it all away. 

Next thing is I still didn't understand why was there so much melodrama about a Mujaheddin trying to blast something in the city. The city was already plagued with one deadly killer and on top of it this blast. And again, the way it is avoided gets you into asking, "Really? Is that it? What was this for? Why even put up that agenda in the book in the first place." While we are at it, lets add aliens as well. Because ... well, why not? 

Then there was a personal vendetta and the main lead is a drunk. No spoiler alert. But he has been a drunk. I assumed that he became a drunk after the incident and the blasts and everything. But seems like, he was a drunk since he was a kid, or something like that perhaps. 

Overall, I just couldn't relate the characters, all Indian ofcourse and that is the reason probably. But I just couldn't draw a mental picture of these characters, I just had to bring a few from the other people I knew mostly foreign. I was trying to play the scene in my mind as I  read through the novel but the Indian characters felt just out of place. May be I have been reading and watching western movies , TV series or reading books, but a guy with a cane, come on, where in India have we seen that. And a rock band back in the day I wasn't even born? Are you kidding me? This was too western to be true. 

Would I recommend you to read it? 

Yeah sure, why not! Despite whatever I think, the suspense is what keeps the reader intrigued. And oh, by the way, there were a few pages at the end of the book after the story had ended titled "PRIVATE : How it all began.." and this was more interesting than the whole novel. 

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P.S. Now, you know why I don't book reviews. I suck at them clearly. And that is the exact same reason I don't get any guest posts or anything of sorts. But I am glad that I have been able to waste some of your time. I shouldn't be glad about that, should I?