Tuesday 27 July 2010

Vikas Swarup: Six Suspects

Given The White Tiger is one of few books that I gave 5 hearts to I eagerly reached for another book written by and Indian author. And it’s not any author, it’s the author of Q&A, the book which became the script base for the world’s famous Slumdog Millionaire movie. I didn’t read Q&A, I loved the movie though. The story was cleverly constructed, had a new and original idea behind it. Plus it was set in Indian reality which fascinates me a lot.

Six Suspects is Swarup’s second book and its story is equally surprising, fresh and original. It starts of with a murder of a film producer, a son of a minister who manages to get away with anything and everything that’s against the law. The story then goes back in time and looks at lives of six people who become suspects for this murder.

One is a tribal from Andaman Islands somewhere in the Bay of Bengal. One is a mobile phone thief who dreams of living a life of the rich. There is also a famous Bollywood actress, a state minister and father of the murdered Vicky Ray, a retired politician and womanizer and lastly, an American Wal-Mart forklift operator who travels to India to get married to his pen pal.

We follow the days in their lives leading up all of them being at Vicky Rai’s party where the crime was committed. It’s an interesting mixture of different parts of Indian life we get introduced to, from the poorest to the richest and most influential in the country. We get to see how money can buy everything and everyone. And when by the end, when you’re starting to think that justice will finally win we witness the process of finding the murderer and we wonder whether there is any hope left.

It’s a really enjoyable book, unique and refreshing. Sometimes slightly difficult to follow with the number of Indian names (especially the part about Vicky’s father) but nonetheless interesting and gripping. The ending is slightly surprising, feels a bit as if the author wanted to play a cheeky joke with the reader but it was a funny joke, definitely made me smile. I think it could follow the paths of Slumdog… if anyone made it into a movie.

My rating: YYYYY

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