Six Suspects

Six Suspects is a murder mystery novel written by Vikas Swarup, an Indian diplomat. He is well known for his debut novel Q & A which has been made into Academy Award winning film Slumdog Millionaire. I have read this novel around 9 months before. It is just yesterday I’ve got the mood and time to write my opinion about Six Suspects. Actually I am running out of movies in my hard disk, and I don’t know what else to do in the little leisure time I get.!!

A suspect is someone who is accused of a crime. Here we have six different suspects as the title suggests and the crime they are accused of is a murder. It is a high profile murder occurred at the capital city of India and the victim, Vivek ‘Vicky’ Rai happened to be the son of U.P home minister. Vicky throws a party in his farmhouse in Delhi to celebrate his acquittal from a murder case which he did before 7 years. That’s where he was killed. Inside the farm there found six individuals, each one with a revolver in their possession and indeed with a motive that is enough to kill Vicky Rai.

Let’s see the suspects one by one.

1. The actress – Shabnam Saxena, a Bollywood actress and heartthrob of many youngsters who lands herself in a bloody mess that takes away her name and fame.
2. The bureaucrat – Mohan Kumar, a corrupt bureaucrat who claims himself as Mohanlal Karamchand Gandhi after a mishap when he attends a reality show.
3. The tribal – Eketi, a tribesman in Andaman and Nicobar who is on a quest to trace and recover a sacred stone that belongs his tribe.
4. The thief – Munna, a petty thief who falls in love with a very rich girl and daughter of a politician that leads himself to problems that are unimaginable.
5. The politician – Jagannath Rai, an ambitious politician who wants to take over the throne and become chief minister. He also happens to be father of the victim.
6. The American – Larry Page, who visits India to meet his fiancé whom he knew through internet.

What is interesting about the novel is the way it is presented to the readers. The characterization of each suspect is superb and narrated cleverly. After the prologue, each character is introduced through a back story, their motives to carry out the task, i.e., the murder of Vicky Rai and the evidences in separate chapters .Though all the characters are etched out in a neat manner, the part of the actress and the politician are outstanding. The politician's dark and dirty games in order to attain the throne is superbly written. Others are also good except 'the American' part which I find damn boring. He could've been cut out from the novel and title can be changed to Five Suspects!!

Another interesting aspect about the novel is, many events in the story are derived from real life incidents. The case for which Vicky Rai was acquitted is based on Jessica Lal murder case. Other events like driving over the platform killing homeless people, hunting deer and other protected species from forests are also based on real life events. I don’t know their real life counterparts though. The novel also parallels the Indian political scenario, the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, the way they operate for their benefits, the industrialists who run the government by bribing the ministers and so on. Being a diplomat, the author would not have much difficulty in expressing these things.

Apart from these aspects, the novel has nothing special to call it a great piece of work. Its like a commercial movie. No wonder if it is made into a movie in the future. By the time I started reading it, I was told that it was murder mystery novel. That’s the first reason I chose to read it. When we read a mystery novel, we know that at the end the mystery will be revealed. The revelation should be shocking enough to make you speechless. Unfortunately here the revelation is not much shocking, or at least for me it was not. I felt that, as the end is approaching, I found the plot getting convoluted. Nevertheless, this could be read for its distinctive style of narration and the real life inspirations. If you are an avid reader, and likes mystery and investigative genres, Six Suspects will keep you engaged and I could say you won’t throw it away in the halfway of reading.

Happy reading…!!!

Sorna Regai (Golden Palmlines) - my favorite novel

In the present era of computer, internet and smartphones, novel reading has been reduced to a considerable extent. People read novels as ebooks in their smartphones nowadays. I myself do not read much nowadays, as I spend more and more time in front of laptop. But whenever I read any book, it still gives immense, unmatched and ultimate pleasure which I don't find in internet and computers. If it’s a book of favorite genre or written by a favorite author, it’d be more interesting and exciting. I always get this excitement whenever I read the novel Sorna Regai (Golden Palmlines) written by Tamil writer Indira Soundararajan. I read it for the first time 12 years before, and I have read it many times after that. But it still looks fresh to me, may be because it was the first mystery thriller novel I have ever read.

The plot is about the events surrounding a death sentenced prisoner, a crime branch police officer, a young palmist, a theatre projectionist and his wife in a time span of less than 2 days. Most of the author’s works are based on supernatural elements, traditional beliefs and mythological aspects. Sorna regai falls under similar category with Palmistry as the base for the plot, thus given the title. There is a small note about different aspects of palmistry, its meaning and benefits, at the beginning of every chapter, making it interesting to read.

Apart from being published as a novel in the year 1999, it was also aired as a tele-serial in Raj TV channel as Marma Desam – Sorna Regai, as the third installment of Marma Desam series. It was quite famous those days. I have heard many people saying that some of the author’s works are kind of crap. I agree with that partly. But I can say surely that this one is an exception.  Sorna regai is not a great novel, not the best written book, but comparing to bulky, hundreds of pages of current bestselling thrillers, I feel that this is a fairly good thriller, not long and not too short. Those who like to read mystical thriller genre stories, this is for you.

About the Author

Indira Soundarajan is the pen name of P. Soundararajan, a well-known Tamil author of novels, short stories, and and screenplays. He is an expert on South Indian Hindu traditions and mythological lore. His stories typically deal with cases of south Indian Hindu traditions and mythology, supernatural occurrence, divine intervention, reincarnation, and ghosts, and are often based on or inspired by true stories reported from various locales around the state of Tamil Nadu. He lives in Madurai. 

(This review is an english version of already published review of the same book in Tamil)