The subject of this review is Abir Mukherjee’s third novel named Sin is the New Love'. I took a hell lot of time to read this book and I had enough reasons to do so. First of all, I had got the chance to read Abir’s second book, S.O.A.R and it was one of the most neatly written books I had come across. So bearing its pristine nature in mind, I had to approach this latest offering. Secondly, like it’s name suggests, is written in the garb of a suspense thriller, so layer by layer it reveals its core and so you got to be well acquainted with everything in order to move on. There were many interesting characters, not least its female protagonist and a ‘ghostly presence’ of a bestseller writer, so you needed to study them carefully, get there in their heads and sense what they were trying to do and why. It was a fruitful exercise and rewards were handsome.
I might wanna give you some details first. I very often dread doing that simply because it runs the risk of making my reviews sound like ‘spoiler alerts’. I would try to be careful though here because reviewing a ‘suspense novel’ could be even trickier. I gotta tell you, however, that the climax of it is absolutely sensational and even though you could sense going through 70% of the book thinking ‘been there, read that’, the climax would leave you go ‘gaffaw’.
Ahi is a young, vivacious and a very educated girl. She is trying to make her name in the field of publishing. She has got her childhood friend Sameem as her business partner. Her father is the DGP of Kolkata. Everything is moving smoothly in her life until one day she gets the news of her favorite writer being murdered under suspicious circumstances. This writer, Mr. Devang Awasthi, was a medical practitioner and a very reputed one in his prime and later on, becomes a celebrated author. After his death, Ahi finds an unpublished manuscript written by Devang Awasthi and she becomes very tempted in publishing it and thus establishing her publishing house for good. But she has had to acquire the permission of his family members to verify the originality of this manuscript and in order to make it an ‘authoritative and substantive’ biography. When she reaches Noida, the home of Devang Awasthi, the circumstances start changing drastically. Not only his biography starts revealing some Very troubling facts but also the behavior of his family members give Ahi enough ammunition to think that everything is not alright about Devang Awasthi’s life and manuscript. She thus starts on an investigating trail and one factor after another leads her to a discovery that she couldn’t have even dreamt of in her wildest nightmare. By the time the novel ends, Ahi finds that everything around her has wore on a face that’s not the truest except for one and that might give Mr. Mukherjee and Ahi an opening into the possibilities of a sequel to this saga.
When I reviewed S.O.A.R, I was so impressed with it that I wrote at that moment that I wouldn’t be surprised if the author scores a movie deal with that book. I am not aware of the current development with SOAR but Abir here has gone one step ahead with his second book. He has, in fact, written the ‘script’ of a fantastic feature film here. The standard of the vocabulary is maintained and it’s startling. Many passages are written in detail here simply for giving you a ‘heady’ feeling of what was going around in that particular scene. Such detailing I have found only in the work of major foreign authors. To be very honest, I am not a fan of them but you gotta give the writer the respect for having that level of imagination to create that scenery. Then he has amped up his efforts while describing the know-hows of medical profession of Devang Awasthi. A casual reader will definitely find it difficult to have a semblance with all the medical terminology but then the writer has tried his best. Mr. Mukherjee’s research work is immaculate and I must compliment him for sticking to the hard work and not opting for short-cuts. A one-third portion of this book could simply have turned out very boring and disconnected but Mr. Mukherjee’s honest work comes to his rescue.
At the end, I must elaborate on its suspense and climax part. The success of a suspense novel/feature film depends totally on the fact that it doesn’t give you anything to sniff at in its opening moments and must lead its readers/viewers into a labyrinthine plot. Here, Mr. Mukherjee doesn’t let you off the hook until you are at its last pages and even at the last one, you will be left thinking. If a book or film leaves you thinking after its run-time, you must commend its maker for doing so. And on this note, I congratulate the writer on successfully attaining his goal.
My rating for this book, just like his last one’s, will be 5/5.
I might wanna give you some details first. I very often dread doing that simply because it runs the risk of making my reviews sound like ‘spoiler alerts’. I would try to be careful though here because reviewing a ‘suspense novel’ could be even trickier. I gotta tell you, however, that the climax of it is absolutely sensational and even though you could sense going through 70% of the book thinking ‘been there, read that’, the climax would leave you go ‘gaffaw’.
Ahi is a young, vivacious and a very educated girl. She is trying to make her name in the field of publishing. She has got her childhood friend Sameem as her business partner. Her father is the DGP of Kolkata. Everything is moving smoothly in her life until one day she gets the news of her favorite writer being murdered under suspicious circumstances. This writer, Mr. Devang Awasthi, was a medical practitioner and a very reputed one in his prime and later on, becomes a celebrated author. After his death, Ahi finds an unpublished manuscript written by Devang Awasthi and she becomes very tempted in publishing it and thus establishing her publishing house for good. But she has had to acquire the permission of his family members to verify the originality of this manuscript and in order to make it an ‘authoritative and substantive’ biography. When she reaches Noida, the home of Devang Awasthi, the circumstances start changing drastically. Not only his biography starts revealing some Very troubling facts but also the behavior of his family members give Ahi enough ammunition to think that everything is not alright about Devang Awasthi’s life and manuscript. She thus starts on an investigating trail and one factor after another leads her to a discovery that she couldn’t have even dreamt of in her wildest nightmare. By the time the novel ends, Ahi finds that everything around her has wore on a face that’s not the truest except for one and that might give Mr. Mukherjee and Ahi an opening into the possibilities of a sequel to this saga.
When I reviewed S.O.A.R, I was so impressed with it that I wrote at that moment that I wouldn’t be surprised if the author scores a movie deal with that book. I am not aware of the current development with SOAR but Abir here has gone one step ahead with his second book. He has, in fact, written the ‘script’ of a fantastic feature film here. The standard of the vocabulary is maintained and it’s startling. Many passages are written in detail here simply for giving you a ‘heady’ feeling of what was going around in that particular scene. Such detailing I have found only in the work of major foreign authors. To be very honest, I am not a fan of them but you gotta give the writer the respect for having that level of imagination to create that scenery. Then he has amped up his efforts while describing the know-hows of medical profession of Devang Awasthi. A casual reader will definitely find it difficult to have a semblance with all the medical terminology but then the writer has tried his best. Mr. Mukherjee’s research work is immaculate and I must compliment him for sticking to the hard work and not opting for short-cuts. A one-third portion of this book could simply have turned out very boring and disconnected but Mr. Mukherjee’s honest work comes to his rescue.
At the end, I must elaborate on its suspense and climax part. The success of a suspense novel/feature film depends totally on the fact that it doesn’t give you anything to sniff at in its opening moments and must lead its readers/viewers into a labyrinthine plot. Here, Mr. Mukherjee doesn’t let you off the hook until you are at its last pages and even at the last one, you will be left thinking. If a book or film leaves you thinking after its run-time, you must commend its maker for doing so. And on this note, I congratulate the writer on successfully attaining his goal.
My rating for this book, just like his last one’s, will be 5/5.
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