This novel is
based on the Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson story format, authored by Nisha Singh.
A murder mystery being solved by Mahesh Bhrigu
Ph.D. (based on the character of Sherlock Holmes) and narrated by Sutte, yes,
you guessed it right, based on Dr. Watson’s character but in this case Sutte is
a journalist.
The site of
the murder is a remote village in India, Senduwar where the villagers
experience a windfall when they discover a buried treasure of precious gold
jewellery in an abandoned part of the village. But their joy is short-lived as
the person who finds it is found dead in mysterious circumstances giving rise
to a myth of an evil spirit residing on that precious land.
Mahesh Bhrigu
is an ex-cop who has left the forces to practice his craft as a private
detective as he felt the Police force cramped his style. He could not bear to
see suspects being given the third degree treatment when all it needed were
some mind games in which he excelled. But despite him leaving the Police force
they relied on him to solve a lot of cases which they could not, hence his
decision of starting out on his own was a mutually beneficial one.
Nisha Singh
has woven the plot beautifully and the reader is kept guessing till the end. The
characterisations of the protagonist and the others in the book too are well
thought out.
In the
acknowledgements, Nisha Singh has stated that she spent a year in writing the
book. I wish she had spent some more time in editing the book too to make it
reader friendly. The language she has used is overly flowery and adjectives are
crammed in every nook and corner of the book. And to top it she has provided
enough ammunition to any grammar Nazi! Possibly she thinks in Hindi and has put
it down in directly translated English ignoring the grammar of the English
language. Given below are a few glaring examples.
Someone was
in a fixture….
Bold over
by the logical marvel….
Took a
stool and lapsed into it….
Jiyashree
got the wind of the news…
Apart from
the mowing of the buffaloes….
People were
scared of her in her life so were frightened more so in her death.
He went
ballistics on a philosopher.
Don’t say I
didn’t warn you before.
‘Legend?’ Bhrigu
ejaculated ‘What legend?’
This time I
reeled and the light of mirth dancing in my eyes was extinguished as if on a
switch.
Be you the
most reasonable and logical person on the planet…
Humanity struggling
to jerk off the thick blankets of gloom.
And the
common mistakes these days of ‘there’ for ‘their’ and ‘quiet’ for ‘quite’ to
name a few.
Despite being
a literature student, she has attributed the authorship of ‘Tale of two cities’
to Leo Tolstoy!
As I said,
if only she had paid more time on editing and simple English language the book
would have been a winner!
This book
seems to be a self-published book hence the lack of professional editing.
The authoress seems to have used Google transliteration for changing her Hindi version to English. All the same, if this book is an interesting mystery, I would like to go for it. Hearty thanks for sharing about it.
ReplyDeleteJitendra Mathur