"Private India" is the latest from the store of Indian Dan Brown "Ashwin Sanghi", to be accurate, this is his 4th book, co-written by famous foreign crime/detective writer James Patterson. As we all know he is a well known author from India and get the alias "Indian Dan Brown" because of his style Dan-Brown-style of novels. He had written 3 books previous to this, starting off with’The Rozabal Line’, ’Chanakya’s Chant’ and’The Krishna Key’, all of which get us into the blend of reality-historical-fiction, for which Dan Brown is famous for. I read and owned all books of AS. He is also included in Celebrity 100 list of Forbes India. On the other hand JP, is a well-known American author who wrote thriller-detective novels, and known for his’Alex Cross’ and’Private’ series. In’Private’ series, his main character is an ex-army soldier Jack Morgan, who runs a detective agency named’Private’, and they’re hired by high-class clients, firms, hotels etc for their security needs. Under this series JP have co-written 7 novels with different authors, and this is the 8th one, 9th is in loop.
My copy is published by Arrow Books, and it is recently released, I got it for Rs.269 from flipkart, since I am a fan of Ashwin Sanghi, the book continues for about 447 pages divided over 116 chapters and an epilogue, also had few initial chapters from the original Private series 1st book "Private" at the end. This one is a thriller-detective novel about a serial killer on loose in the streets of Mumbai.
A Thai Doctor Dr.Kanya Jaiyen is killed in a hotel room in Mumbai, the hotel’s detective agency is "Private India", the Indian branch of worldwide famous detective agency "Private", and is run by ex-RAW agent Santosh Wagh, he was called immediately, but it is not only the case of 1 single murder, but soon Santosh and his team indulge in more murders, and all murders are of women, and looks like the serial killer wants to tell something, he is either performing ritual killings or he is full of hatred from someone or something. Will they be able to crack the case or will not, a terrorist attack is also planned in the city, there’s a notorious gangster on loose, and a baba whose intentions are not good, there are many suspects, including from Private’s own team, and many have hidden motives and past.
The language of the book is simple, so it seems that most of the part of the book is written by AS, though some part bear the style, which could be JP’s, though I haven’t read him before, but by the excerpt given at the end of book of his one novel, looks like the case. But I didn’t like this effort from Ashwin Sanghi, his other 3 books are much better than this one, may be because I didn’t venture much into detective genre, but still I expect AS to be authentic and expert of a particular genre i.e. historical fiction. Plus this kind of stories are very common in detective-thriller genre books, maybe the handling is different. Also, he tried to add terrorism in the book, which was not at all required or was linked with the main story, even the climax at the end looked hurried, and easily the terror plot get folded, maybe because the main culprit is caught.
The starting of the chapters sometimes may confuse the reader, as there are many characters who are doing their work, and chapters are concentrating on such vast situations, though they’re linked together. The character-sketch of all characters are okay, Santosh’s character was more illustrative. I would like to see the movie version of this book, but all-in-all I would say that this book is not best from AS. The end where the killer was caught though surprised me, and that is well thought, so it was one saving grace for the book.
I am afraid that I would not say YES for this book, though I am not saying NO as well(Need to chose one as MS format does not allowed to submit a review without any recommendation), I would say that if you like detective stories, you can opt for this one, this book will certainly not bore you, I read it in just 14 days(Avg 32 pages a day), and it is still much better than many Indian love-story writing author’s books. Soon I will order "Half Girlfriend" again coz I am CB’s fan as well, and would like to read this book as well. I will rate PI 2.5/5.
GRuchirG.
Jai Raam ji ki:)