Knowing the fact that my last written review is still not rated, I am continuing with my social work on reviewing the products I used :P, so here again with a new review of a book’Salim Must Die’ written by Mukul Deva. It is 2nd installment of MD’s ’Lashkar’ series which is a story of terrorism and fighting against it. This book was published in 2009, just 1 year after his first and successful book ’Lashkar’, my copy was published by Harper Collins and it goes for 415 pages.
The story started where the first book ends. Iqbal the youth from India was led into terrorism by the terrorist groups and secret agencies from across the border, but when he came to know that in the terror strikes he conducted or was a part of, also cost him his family, he decided to quit the terrorism and wanted to kill whoever misguided him on this wrong path, he want to take revenge from every terrorist from across the border including an ex-armyman and the leader of terrorists Salim. He killed his helper while crossing the border Into India by illegal crossing, and got caught by Indian patrols, he don’t have any feelings, but wanted a revenge.
Meanwhile Salim with his aide Cheema planned a never-before-thought planned strike across the globe in all big countries, and he choose his team from various countries, hand-picked them all for the strikes. He asked a Chinese scientist Mai Hu to create biological weapons, since he is heading a secret biochemical lab facility in China. Mai Hu take VX gas & yesteryear’s famous virus - Virola Major (which causes smallpox) and its deadliest model, and packed I t in perfume & aerosal cans which then can be imported into different countries without anybody suspecting anything. Also 4 suitcase nuclear bombs are provided from across the border to nuke 4 countries including India, and that is when Indian secret agencies & Force 22 commanders came into action when they found Mai Hu’s body in a Delhi Hotel, with his chemicals missing. And the hunt started.
Over the many chapters, the readability is good, and easy English that anybody can read, also the story starts where first ends, so it’s a good and well thought story, though it may be common across many action-thriller writers, the scenes described here are full of filmy style, well I liked that, that is what make Tom Clancy(I never read him yet) or Matthew Reilly a hit. There are some loopholes in the story, story is little more ambitious and also diverted from the main story in the beginning, since the characters are indulge in some histories before proceeding further, but then it starts and starts with a bang, and then it sped fast, a good thriller going on a run.
Some loopholes included - It was so easy for terrorist to plan everything and that too with not much of a hide, guess this Salim Murad has a profile on meetyourmatch.com website(which is used for communicating in-between) as smurad, well that is easy enough for anybody. Then there is a scene where police officials are running behind a culprit, but they don’t know it yet, they’re just running since he panicked as he was having the nuke with him, and then in a corner, when he tried to activate the nuke, the cops killed him in the head, well I don’t agree fully there, cops generally don’t hit in head if they’re unsure who the person is, at max they can hit on legs and ask the culprit to surrender. And the ending was a bit complete but as the story goes, the story is still not ended, I would like to have a hanging end in the end of book, something like, "But still the war is on".
But all-in-all this one is a good book to read and a worthy successor of ’Lashkar’, I read the last few pages very fast, in my mind it goes like I am watching an action-packed movie, I will be buying the 3rd book soon, let’s see when, for now I am still pending with another book review which I completed before starting this one. I rate this one as 3.5/5.
It was a good offer of getting the book at half the price on Flipkart (they have an offer 2 months back on new year if you buy books of minimum Rs.500 then prices will be halved, and I got 4 books for Rs.505).
GRuchirG.
Jai Raam ji ki:)