Finished reading The Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup yesterday, second novel from author of famous Q&A movie, popularly known as Slumdog Millionaire.
The writing style is quite similar to the previous novel, Q & A, by the author.
The novel starts off with a murder scene; murder of a famous, rich and corrupt industrialist.
There are six suspects including the victim's father.
The novel then delves into the past of each of these suspects and how each of them had a motive to kill the victim.
80% of the novel is about unraveling the ulterior motives of each of these six suspects, that could have led them to the murder of the victim.
An investigative journalist then decides to work on the case, and declares one of the suspects to be the killer, revealing that the victim had killed the brother of the accused, and this was his revenge.
Till this point, the novel is able to interest the reader and keeps them hooked.
But the next chapter negates this accusation and holds the victim's sister guilty of the murder.
This is when the author loses his audience and the novel starts sounding banal.
To further agitate the already lost audience the next chapter unleashes the mask of the real killer.
A new character who was not amongst the six suspects and had absolutely no enmity with the victim.
He killed the victim under a nation cleansing drive- he wanted to clear the nation of the corrupt politicians.
Whew! The novel is silly and fails to hold the interest towards the end.
The climax is disappointing and leaves the reader with a sense of disbelief.
Too much of fiction and redundant twists snatch away the stickiness of the novel towards the end.
Priced at Rs.
185, the novel still fails to prove worthy of the amount! Too much of disappointment holds me back from recommending even a single read.
My rating 1.
5/5