’Devil in Pinstripes’- The title caught my attention and I guessed it was about some office politics and my antennae were up . I bought this at crosswords even though its quite expensive by the standards of today’s fiction novels by Indian authors.
The introduction was quite interesting with the protogonist, Amit Sharma(not sure why, but even in a novel written by a South Indian, the main protogonist has to be a North Indian), a top level executive of NY Bank, being issued a non bailable warrant .At this point, I thought it would definitely make an interesting read.
But a few pages later all that seems to fall flat when Amit is posted to NFS, a subsidiary of NY BanK and what follows is the one upmanship game between Gowri, another top level executive at NFS.Gowri’s authority cant be challenged by even the MD of that company(surprising for a US based company’sfdiary). Gowri is a corporate Goon who runs the NFS with iron fist and can promote worthless protege like Sangeeta .
The rest of the plot is about Amit and Gowri trying to outwit each other.However, things are not smooth for Amit as his biotechlogist turned banker wife Chanda is posted in NFS and reports to Gowri(not sure how can Aditya, Amit’s boss can send Amit to act as a check on his wife’s Manager) And Gowri tries to check Amit using Chanda as a pawn which leads to conflict between Amit and Chanda(This reminded me of Basha movie where the protogonist goes full steam against the villian inspite of his father being there with the villian - Quite unbelievable.It is here that the characterization of Chanda suffers and she looks like a selfish woman trying to scuttle he husband’s good work for her rating.
Towards the end, the plot becomes even insipid with protogonist going to jail for some recovery agent’s mistake and getting bailed out and released.
The ending is not convinving with some Jamebondish investigations by another character .And even stranger, inspite of all the misdeeds of Gowri and his proteges being brought into light, Gowri is only transferred to another division and not sacked(not sure if a very big company, that too in Banking gives so little importance to Integrity?)
One of the main flaws of Devil in Pinstripes is that it goes on and on with description of what is happening and the one upmanship game for pages and pages without interspersing them with conversations.Ofcourse, there were little flashes of humour like the funny description of the way people try to talk in loud voice on a ISD call(as if their voice should reach the other party directly) etc, but they seem insufficient when the topic is Banking and NBFCs, that too the politics at higher levels.And at the end I could not make out who was the Devil in Pinstripes(At one point Amit calls himself the devil in Pinstripes)
Overall, if you are from banking or NBFC background you might enjoy this in parts.But for the other folks, I doubt how much enjoyable this is