Review: Brutal by Uday Satpathy

 

Book: Brutal 

Author: Uday Satpathy 

Pages: 270 

I read it on: My Kindle 

I read it in: 4 hours 

Plot Summary: "You are in real, real danger." - A school teacher gets a creepy warning in his mailbox. Seven days later, he murders eleven of his students. Two months later, he is gunned down in broad daylight by an obscure militant outfit. Justice served. The nation pacified. Case closed.

But not for two crime reporters. Seeking redemption through this case are Prakash and Seema, ace journalists but broken individuals. As they follow the story, they are led to the ominous wilds of Bandhavgarh where an eerily similar massacre had occurred eight years ago. Little do they know that they have stirred up a hornet's nest.

One by one their leads start turning up in body bags and they are chased by assassins at every corner. Soon they realize that they are pitted against evil powers pervading the business and political DNA of the country, with an unbelievably sinister agenda. People who are about to let Prakash and Seema know how brutal they can be. 

We were sent a copy of Brutal by the folks over at Bloody Good Book. Brutal is India's first crowdsourced book- which basically means that readers voted for this book to get published after reading the first three chapters. An interesting concept, don't you think? 

As always, the thoughts and opinions are all mine.  

What I Liked: Quick list:

• The premise of the book is interesting- serial killings, which have some similar characteristics and some powerful people people eliminating everyone in the know, makes for quite a gripping read. There are multiple themes explored in this book and all of them work well together to create a pretty tight narrative. 

• The story is very fast paced. There are multiple things happening with Prakash and Seema exploring two related but different lines of investigation- one in Ambala and the other in Bandhavgarh. Even though there is so much happening as a reader you don't get lost at any point and the story moves along pretty quickly with nice chunks of new information being revealed at strategic points. 

• The characters are likable. Prakash has his own demons to fight from a previous encounter with Naxalites and is gradually making his way back to being a journalist again. Seema has her own personal tragedy, which she is trying to overcome by immersing herself in her job. Both Prakash and Seema are honest, smart journalists, who do a great job with following clues and joining the dots. 

• There is also Prakash's research guy- Mrinal- with his own mysterious past, who is quite funny and he helps Prakash trace phone records and unearth IP addresses and such. Mrinal is quite witty and his presence adds some humour to otherwise serious proceedings. 

What I Didn't Like: A few things:

• There is no real suspense in this book. The first third of the book raises a lot of questions and there is an element of suspense as to what is going on etc. but everything is almost fully revealed in the second part of the book, which was a let down. This book is marketed as some sort of a crime thriller and it seems like it is quite literally just that- there is crime and the pace of the narrative is thrilling. No major mystery suspense to sustain one's interest beyond the first third of the book. 

• The last third of the book seemed sort of unnecessary. I don't want to give away what happened, because, duh, spoilers, but all that rigamarole of going to Bangalore and everything was just forced and it stretched the book for longer than it needed to be stretched. 

Rating: 3.5/5
This is a good debut novel and is pretty well written. If you like fast-paced crime thrillers with a fair amount of blood and gore, then this is a good book to pick up.