Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup

Six Suspects

Vikas Swarup

I love books set in India and this is one with a bit of a difference - it's a crime novel. A well known hoodlum is murdered at a seance and six very disparate people in the audience are found to be carrying guns and become the obvious suspects. Like Q & A (source of Slumdog Millionaire) you get an insight into Indian society with the author's special brand of off the wall humour.

Extract
The suspects are a motley lot, a curious mélange of the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. There is Mohan Kumar, the former Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh, whose reputation for corruption and womanizing is unparalleled in the annals of the Indian Administrative Service. The second is a dim-witted American who claims to be a Hollywood producer. Spicing up the mix is the well-known actress Shabnam Saxena, with whom Vicky Rai was infatuated, if the gossip in the film magazines is to be believed. There is even a jet-black, five-foot-nothing tribal from some dusty village in Jharkhand who is being interrogated at arm’s length for fear that he might be one of the dreaded Naxalites who infest that state. Suspect number five is an unemployed graduate named Munna with a lucrative sideline as a mobile-phone thief. And completing the line-up is Mr Jagannath Rai himself, the Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Vicky Rai’s dad. Could a father stoop any lower?
Parallels
  • Q & A by Vikas Swarup
  • The White Tiger by Aravinda Adiga
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Violence
Explicit sexual content