"Private India" - Book Review

I have had a long-ish relationship with James Patterson novels and the sheer thrill of reading about murder and mayhem keeps me hooked to the genre that he has mastered. I remember reading my first Alex Cross novel while I was still in school, publicly aghast and secretly thrilled at the kind of language and the ferocity of the crimes described. It was a very good way to lose my innocence, in a manner of speaking.

The remnants of the thrill (for it’s been a long time since I had my nose buried in a James Patterson title, I hadn’t even heard about the more-than-6-book-old Private series) ensured that I added “Private India” to my cart when I happened to edit a book description at work. But just before I went ahead and bought it, came BlogAdda’s book review program, I tried my luck and the book was delivered in less than a week’s time. For free, mind you. Imagine my delight.

I haven’t read Ashwin Sanghi, nor do I intend to. I have to admit that it was a bit of a dampener to have him collaborate with Patterson – I really did expect a mess of a book. And at 450-odd pages, I was wondering how I was going to finish it in time for a review. But I needn’t have worried, the print is HUGE and hence it took me all of 4 hours to wrap it up.

Read the blurb here:

First, the bad:
•    What. Is. Up. With. The. Drama!!! So much of Bollywood-style dramatics happening throughout the story, almost making it seem like someone had a movie in mind rather than a book. Jack Morgan’s presence feels useless, to say the least.
•    Though the background story of the lead is a run-of-the-mill one, it could have been dealt with in a much more engaging manner. I feel that the whole emotional angle has not been exploited completely.
•    Trying to Indianize western characters is one of the big mistakes Indian writers make. We should stick to our own kind of characterizations without trying to ape the kind of descriptions of characters that the Westerners have. Capturing the nuances of Indian-ness and the quirks that come with being innately Indian are not only very interesting but also something that most pop Indian writers ignore.
•    The plot within the plot hasn’t been executed well, thereby making the bigger picture of terrorism seem like just an appendage when it could actually have added to the story.
•    The usual Patterson villains are creepy and eerie, the villains in this book are sort of bland.
•    Jack Morgan’s somewhat lukewarm acceptance of his friend/lover’s murder is disturbing.
•    I failed to fall for the underdog lead character, which is actually a first. 

Now, the good:
•    Classic James Patterson-style narration – a chapter about everything else and then a chapter about the murderer, alternated. I loved it, to say the least. If this was penned by Sanghi, he has managed to carry it off with élan.
•    Slow build-up to a fitting finale, most of it was executed well, making it a very racy read. Staccato bursts of chapters keep you riveted.
•    The ending leaves the thread open to more from the series and if executed better, I’d definitely like to read.
•    A drastic reduction in the number of typos and spelling mistakes and grammar errors from the last so many Indian-English books which I have read. Only a few phrases stand out as having heavy MTI, so to speak.

On the whole, a decent read. Next time you settle down for a long train journey or find yourself out of things to do on a Sunday afternoon, pick this one up. Whether you like it or not will depend on what literary diet you are on: Kafka-lovers will thup at the book while Bhagat-lovers will be overcome with joy.

I consider myself to be somewhere between the two, so I give the book a 3.2 rating out of 5 - 3 for the mystery, 0.15 to Patterson and 0.05 to Sanghi.  

This review is a part of the biggest Book Review Program for Indian Bloggers. Participate now to get free books!

Silent Night - III

Part II

24th December 2013

I brushed away the annoying wisps of hair from my face as I squinted in concentration - the tails of the white shirt that I was wearing fluttered in the wind as my pale legs shivered in the cold and my fingers flew over the keyboard as I churned out another scene for my protagonists.

I was sitting on the white patio, overlooking the solid-looking mountain on the backdrop of the clear blue skies. Wispy looking clouds scuttled by and the occasional eagle soared high – peaceful and silent, the place fostered the writing bug in me and stoked the fire high, to fill pages and pages with scribbled words, beautiful words.

It had been a year since I sat on the floor of the bridal suite, a year which had seen me change completely as a person – so much so, nobody from my past even recognized the person I was now.

That random girl you see in the café with messy hair, book in hand, absently sipping on hot chocolate? That is me. That is the me who took a long hard look at the life she was living and was shocked to realize that she had been making the very same mistakes that she had once vowed not to. 

I had relegated loved ones to a prison in my heart, not allowing myself to love, not letting myself feel their love. I had blamed the walls I had built around myself on my past but as I read Justin’s letter, I realized that I had become the opposite of who I really was – a dour businesswoman who cared more about what I did than who I did it with.

When realization dawned, I made an instant decision, I called my manager and transferred power of attorney of my company to him. He was shocked, he called it a whim, a result of the recent heart-break I had faced, but I managed to talk him into it – I still thank God mentally for giving me the sense to hire Sohail for today, I’d be truly lost without him.

As to what I wanted to do after relinquishing the power that had gone to my head and changed me, I sat back in my bean bag and let the tiny flicker of a lost childhood dream play hide and seek with my thoughts – I wanted to write.

As a child, I’d spent hours stitching together the right words to frame the perfect sentences that told stories that came to me as I wrote. I’d won every competition in sight because what I wrote was far beyond my age and that was what made people take notice and scared me at the same time.

One day, my stepfather found and read one of my stories and whispered in my ear, “You want to write, eh? I can’t wait to see you try and fail so hard that you will forget every word you know. You'll always be a failure, I hope you know that” sniggered and walked away. The child in me was so traumatized by such a small incident; the fragile self-esteem broke once again in his hands and I never tried to write again.

And that is exactly what I decided to do to show the ghosts of my past that I was still the same person. After I amended the mistakes I’d made, found a quiet cottage in Siliguri that was picture perfect and settled down, I wrote again.

Now, I was telling my own story. I was penning down my first book and what started as yet another romance novel, found me drawing deeply from my own story, catharsis in a way, brilliant semi-fiction material in another way – it was all I could do to not rub my palms in glee when I realized my own life was so dramatic, it would make a great story.

I was almost done, all I needed was a fitting climax to the fine filigree of emotions that I’d managed to weave into the black words that showed up in contrast on the stark white Word doc.

With the annoying wisps of hair out of my face, I tapped a finger absently on the mousepad as my mind worked furiously – where was I going, how did my story end?

That was when I heard him sneak up behind me before he could say ‘boo’, spoiling his plans to startle me. I looked up at his smiling face, a good morning if there ever was one, I thought. 

To be continued...