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Daily Mail’s review of Praying Mantis!
“On the surface it is a classic locked-room mystery, but one executed with such grace and style that it never seems old-fashioned or forced. Athreya is a detective to cherish.”
Coming Soon: A DIRE ISLE
Here is the first review of the upcoming mystery, A DIRE ISLE. Publishers Weekly review the second Harith Athreya mystery that is set in Orchha in Bundelkhand (Central India).
Link: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-951709-52-5
Raman’s enjoyable sequel to 2020’s A Will to Kill takes private investigator Harith Athreya to an archaeological dig on the banks of the River Betwa in Bundelkhand, India, at the behest of investors in the excavation concerned about financial irregularities. The site is run by the overbearing and unpopular Mrs. Markaan, who has a reputation for taking credit for work done by junior archaeologists on her team. Legend has it that a couple, forbidden to marry because one was Hindu and the other Muslim, escaped to a nearby island with a giant mastiff dog and have haunted it ever since. When Mrs. Markaan turns up dead on the island, Athreya must determine whether the death is related to the troubles with the dig’s finances, or if the island’s myths have become real. Raman does a good job weaving in the mystery with a possibility of the supernatural, all while juggling a large cast of characters. A multilayered reveal in the final pages proves satisfying as well. Armchair travelers and fans of traditional mysteries should take note.
A Will To Kill – The Start of a New Series
So many of us have grown up on a diet of classic mysteries – be it from the masters like Agatha Christie, Edgar Wallace and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or from less celebrated writers. There is something endearing about these stories that make us go back and re-read them many decades after they were written. Their settings, the puzzles they pose and the inimitable denouements at the end are nothing short of magical! An old mansion, a lonely valley, swirling mist and a spooky legend combine to evoke memories of one such popular milieu.
For long, one has wanted to read such mysteries set in India and with Indian characters … whodunits with no profanity or sleaze that everyone in the family can enjoy. Unfortunately, they are few and far between.
A Will To Kill represents an attempt to create one such classic Indian mystery. It is a homage to the old masters. What milieu did I create for this mystery? What else? An old mansion with an eerie past, set in a remote valley full of swirling mist!
As the story is set in the present day, one cannot get away from mobile phones and WhatsApp, even in remote hills. So, here is a present-day novel modeled on the mysteries of yesteryear. This is my first domestic whodunit after writing four corporate thrillers.
Happy reading!
When headlines are for hire, greed is inevitable
Continuing with the theme of setting each book in a different sector, the Fraudster Series moves to the media industry in the fourth book. Conspirator begins with a hedonistic party thrown by a media mogul in Coorg. Mingling and conniving away from prying eyes and ears, is an intriguing cross-section of powerful men and women – politicians, businessmen, celebrities, and even a blackmailer and a purveyor of fake news.
Things go awry when murder strikes, and very soon, Inspector Dhruvi Kishore finds herself in the bewildering world of fake news, paid new and tailored new. 
Be it the west or India, the last year or two have been roiled by fake and disingenuous news. Fake news and dubious social media posts are said to have played a major role in the 2016 US presidential elections. Russia is said to have been involved in it too (Russia has denied the allegation). National boundaries are, of course, meaningless in our digital world.
Closer home, I recently came across a WhatsApp message that seemed to have a particularly malicious intent. The message purported to be a “letter” from a senior director of a global manufacturer of breakfast cereals and snacks to a customer. This purported letter “acknowledged” that the company uses pork and beef gelatin in their products. The malicious message sought to tarnish a global brand in India by taking a leaf out of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.
To my horror, I found educated and “enlightened” people forwarding and spreading the message. Even the learned, it appears, fall for such obvious ploys and become unwitting abettors of this insidious mendacity. This is especially so on WhatsApp, where messages can’t be traced back to the originator (unlike Facebook and Twitter).
Clearly, politics is not the only field where fake news rears its ugly head. The business world too is tailor-made for it – tons of money can be made from it. And there are haunts other than politics and business too.
Conspirator distinguishes between three shades of this malaise – fake news, paid news and tailored new. The last is perhaps the most debauched of the three. It happens when trusted journalists (in newspapers, TVs or websites) customise headlines and content to suit private interests – political, commercial or any other. The guardians of truth stoop to cheat and betray the trust they enjoy.
The ones who do this are sly, intelligent people who practice their deceit in a way that makes it difficult for the unsuspecting reader/viewer to realise that what she is reading/watching is tailored news. It sneaks in under her guard and corrupts her perception and beliefs.
Conspirator is the story of such people and their craft. The greatest intangible asset of the media is their ability to influence opinions and choices. The antagonists in the story make use of it to the hilt.
A Wounded Unicorn
As cash crunches strike e-tailers, valuations plummet and down-rounds loom large, the stark reality facing e-commerce unicorns become clear for all to see. Protestations that all is well, and attempts to talk up valuations become less credible by the day. As boardroom conflicts escalate and the day of reckoning fast approaches, a shake-out in the sector becomes imminent. The e-commerce sector becomes a pressure cooker.
Against this backdrop, take a hypothetical e-tailer unicorn that is facing a cash crunch. What if the e-tailer suddenly discovers bugs in its offices and finds that it is the target of corporate espionage? To make matters worse, an investor disappears and a massive data theft follows.
The all-important funding round stalls.
As the stakes escalate and risk surges inexorably, murder follows.
This is the fictional tale narrated in SABOTEUR, the latest corporate thriller set in Bangalore. As bots mimic humans in the Indian cyberspace, men risk millions in Hong Kong. A story of a wounded unicorn and its venture fund investors.
Holmes or Poirot? A difficult choice.
Holmes or Poirot? I just can’t choose between the two. One goes by physical evidence and the other by behaviour and motivations. Both have idiosyncrasies that could initially be annoying, but they grow on you as you read more of them.
What is more interesting than the creations are the two authors themselves. Here is a contrast that may explain the different natures of their creations.
- Agatha Christie, in her own words, had a very happy childhood in a well-off family. Conan Doyle’s childhood was very different. His happiest moments were when he wrote to his mother from his oppressive boarding school.
- Christie was home-schooled and had a governess, whereas Doyle learnt his ropes outside in the world.
- Doyle travelled extensively, including to the arctic and Africa. At least in the initial years, Christie was mostly in England and France
- Doyle was a practicing doctor, while Christie was a pharmacist.
To me, this seems to explain why Holmes was an outdoors, vigorous, physical evidence detective, while Poirot was more of the indoors, armchair variety who relied mostly on soft aspects. The characters reflect their creators’ lives.
Their training seems to explain why Watson was a practicing doctor, while Hastings was an incorrigible romantic.
Detective fiction set in India - corporate & domestic 