Author Vikas Swarup, the writer of Q&A, which Slumdog Millionaire is originally based on, offers an eagerly awaited second offering Six Suspects
2009-05-20
Seven years ago, Vivek 'Vicky' Rai, the playboy son of the Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh, murdered Ruby Gill at a trendy restaurant in New Delhi simply because she refused to serve him a drink.
Now Vicky Rai is dead, killed at his farmhouse at a party he had thrown to celebrate his acquittal.
The police cordon off the venue and search each and every guest. Six of them are discovered with guns in their possession and are taken in for questioning.
Who are these six suspects? And what were they doing in the farmhouse that night?
In this elaborate mystery we join Arun Advani, India's best-known investigative journalist, as the lives of these six suspects unravel before our eyes: a corrupt bureaucrat who claims to have become Mahatma Gandhi overnight; an American tourist infatuated with an Indian actress; a stone-age tribesman on a quest to recover a sacred stone; a Bollywood sex-symbol with a guilty secret; a mobile-phone thief who dreams big; and an ambitious politician prepared to stoop low. Each is equally likely to have pulled the trigger.
Both a riveting page-turner and a richly textured tale of human frailties and emotions, Vikas Swarup's eagerly awaited second offering is fiction at its best. Audaciously and astutely plotted, with a panoramic imaginative sweep, 'Six Suspects' is the work of a master story teller.
