Book Review: In the Shadows of Death by Sourabh Mukherjee

It's not always that you read a book and get nightmares instead of dreams. In the Shadows of Death, a well portrayed murder mystery by Sourabh Mukherjee,  was one book that managed to make me totally lost in its plot for days!

This is the first time I'm trying crime fiction, partially because I never came across anything of that genre, partially because I never searched for something like that fearing I may not like it.

This book turned out to be a book beyond my expectations. I'm a slow reader, as I generally daydream or visualise the plot every now and then while reading, and this is painstakingly time consuming. This time, however, there was nothing much to daydream about. The book is all about crimes happening one after the other, all of them being linked to each other one way or the other. As a reader, I just was curious to know the killer and the reason behind the series of crimes.

The story is set in the city of Kolkata. The way Sourabh has expressed each sequence is remarkable. I could feel the tension when each crime was being discussed and conclusions met. I switched places from character to character, and finally settled as a reader.

Here's a book that brings out the dirty side of the corporate world. It shows you to what extent the whole system is being corrupt or manipulated, and to what levels one could stoop to ensure a safe career. 

In an article published in The Hindu, I’d read that Sourabh’s familiarity with the corporate world has been an inspiration to write the book. After having read it, I'm still not being able to come to terms with the kind of picture I could draw about the corporate world from Sourabh’s words, and I sincerely hope that whatever was written in the book was more of imagination than of real-life flavoured instances. I also wish Sourabh good luck for his upcoming books, and hope I’ll get to read them too! :)