Every time I went to a bookstore, Six Suspects stared at me ominously. I knew it was about a playboy who had killed a model at a party. That did ring a bell and I was uncomfortable. As the days passed, I also heard about Farrukh Dhondy’s Bikini Murders and somewhere my mind mixed the two and I said no to Bikini Suspects until Slumdog Millionaire and Danny Boyle happened to us.
I did a quick Google on Slumdog and came to know that it was authored by Vikas Swaroop and I went ahem ahem for obvious reasons. A Google on Vikas Swaroop . gosh Six Suspects is by him. Oh My God! Omigod! Oh My Gosh! Omigosh! Pronto, a visit was paid to the closest bookstore and I was preening with my copy of Six Suspects. Six Suspects is(thankfully) not about Vicky Rai, the incorrigible scum who murders Ruby Gill. It is about six people who are suspected of killing him. And it is about India and the not so comfortable aspects of the country(the sub-text).
The story begins with an article by Arun Advani, India’s best-known investigative journalist. Advani wanted Vicky’s ar$e as he bumped off Ruby Gill, a model-bartender at a party. Vicky’s acquitted and he wanted the system’s ar$e for letting him go. But, in a slightly exaggerated prologue to the story he adds a twist of his own saying that now Vicky’s dead and there are six suspects. Each of these had a gun and a motive for killing Vicky Advani. Disguised as a whodunit, this whydunnit then explores every nook and corner of the psyche of each of the suspects.
The characters are richly textured. There is a corrupt bureaucrat who is possessed by Gandhi, an American tourist in love with a top-billing Bollywood actress, a top Bollywood actress(the same) with a body double and a past to boot, a stone-age tribesman in the big bad city(read cities) to retrieve a talisman, a mobile thief in love with Vicky’s sister and a dirty scumbag of a politician who fathered Vicky.
The book is a page-turner. No doubt about it. The characterizations are superb: Mohan the bureaucrat’s transformation into Mohandas Gandhi is super stuff, the dumb American tourist is a ROFL, the mobile thief a stroke of genius, the Bollywood actress real, the love story between the tribesman and a victim of the Bhopal Gas tragedy heartwarming.
But there is a problem.
Several problems.
The problem with the book is that it is too contrived. And that is just the beginning of it all. The situations are hackneyed, the plot development too incidental for comfort and too many media headlines make their way here - Al Qaeda(that takes the cake), politicians bumping off cops, the murder of the poetess-mistress by a politician, blackbuck killing, mowing down of pavement dwellers, Bhopal Gas tragedy. Every possible cliché is used here - the corrupt politician, his lusty henchmen, the devious villain, the transformed crook, the virginal beauty, the confused American and the extremely’black’ villain, Vicky Rai who is involved in every kind of debauched-vilified-villainy. *
Six Suspects** is great on ambition and low on execution. The vision is not the problem, the eyesight is.
Six Suspects is like a one night stand. Have fun reading it and go oh-my-god-oh-my-god-i-love-it-give-me-hard-baby and then forget all about it.