Watched the movie Karz - quite an old one with Rishi Kapoor and Simi Garewal? Reincarnation and all...revisited in ’’Blind Alley’’. The book is like a typical masala movie from bollywood and to read it, you must subscribe to the ’’anything can happen’’ school of thought. Because if you do not, then a lot of the story might seem convenient - like someone appearing out of the blue, happening to know so much when you might wonder why and so on. The storyline - a serial killer who specializes in kidnapping and subsequently killing young girls and cleans up their faces by removing the skin and flesh.
The kills are in random places and there are similarities with other kills in the past by other serial killers. There is a family that involves a cop, a forensic sculptor and their young daughter who gets dragged into this killers radar. The rest of the story is about how the family deals with protecting the daughter and also in the process unveil the story behind the killer’s intent and psyche. (There are reminders of ’Silence of the Lambs’ all over except that that one was in a league of its own) The storyline is good and characters well conceived but then the writer indulges into making the pursuit of the killer a little too elaborate for even a patient reader. Some of the aspects of the ancient settings could be better described I think