Plot of the Book
Karan Panjabi is an ex-GB2 employee and a current in-training crime reporter for TOI (yup, Times of India). Because of the soft corner for his career launching company, Greater Boston Global Bank (GB2), he asks the CEO, Indrani, to let him investigate the series of murders happening to the key employees of GB2.
Tanuja, the HR head, and Vikram, the branch banking head, are the key show movers in the bank. Nothing gets done without their consent and everything gets done with their backing. Vikram is a strategic and ruthless manager who likes to keep his people everywhere in the bank so as to keep a hold on all the going ons.
Tanuja is his close friend and always keeps on consulting him on her every move. Vikram gets incriminated when all the murders have happened in his designated branches. The other side of the story includes a nuclear plant in Devikulum district of Kerala.
Krishna Menon is protesting against the government's secrecy regarding the nuclear project. He wanted transparency in the procedure and security of the people around the plant owing to the promise he made to his dying son twenty five years earlier when he had died due to the nuclear plant leakage in Russia.
The third part of the story is exchange of blood diamonds in Africa for the weapons. These blood diamonds become the reason for the murder of one of the GB2 employees, Harshita. She conveys this information to another of the employee, Raymond, who also gets murdered, the plot unveiled by Karan.
My Review
Ravi Subramanian is apparently the John Grisham of banking. Honestly, I am sick of Indian authors being touted the equivalent of the foreign authors. The main issue which I found with the book is the absence of punctuations at the appropriate places.
For example, "I am Indrani" and "I am, Indrani" are two different sentences. The book is full of such mistakes and I did get confused at many places. To unravel the above sentence only took me 3-4 reads. The editor should have looked into that. Another issue is the use of Indian slangs.
Nah, I don't mean they should try to Americanize it but honestly, when reading a book, I like the language to be pure. I hardly like slangs even if they are just curse words and in any book for that matter. Sidney Sheldon is another glaring example of poor language.
As for the plot, it really seems interesting but when I look at the book overall, the plot didn't really hook me up. What actually hooked me to the book was the ruthless politics in the banking corporate. I would have rather have that as compared to an international conspiracy involving a bank.
As for a person sitting in a boardroom unravelling the entire thing, it was a lot like Hercule Poirot's use of gray cells. That should be a domain left to Agatha Christie only I feel. The book didn't really give me a great pleasure in the later part but yes, the first half is racy.
Its a decent read. I have not read any other book from the author so can't really compare this book to his others but I do believe that the author has a good command on the banking domain all across the world, I suppose. I did find it refreshing to read about banks and their processes.
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Ravi Subramanian has got an expertise to connect to his readers, create a magnetic theme and get his readers absorbed deep into each page of his thriller. The Bankster is as absorbing as his earlier four thrillers. He drives his story quite exhaustively and beautifully with full command on the subject and clarity in concept. That probably has come due to Author's extensive experience in banking sector for years. It seems for all those years of his career in banking, he drank and ate all the core processes of banking so well and hence has been able to bring out such a fantastic piece of work.
ReplyDeleteThis is his first work that I have read and decided to review, such was the charismatic story of BANKSTER. Karan Panjabi, who enters into the story of The Bankster quite late but has been characterized in a very strong manner, probably is the replica of Ravi Subramanian himself in real life, so sharp and quick in resolving a series of murders mystery. Not all murders happen in same manner, neither happened in the same place of country. But there was a deep connect in all serial killings that happened in various countries and that is where the expertise of Karan Panjabi comes into picture who gets hardly 48 hours to resolve this case. Author takes you to various cities around the globe - Angola, Vienna, Mumbai and Devikulam to get you acquainted with various characters of the story and get you engaged in the plot well woven.
Basically, the story is about a multinational bank that is doing quite well in terms of business in its various branches all across India after entering the country. Greater Boston Global Bank or GB2 is operative in all major cities of India and has its country headquarter in one of its branches in Mumbai. GB2 in quite professional in its approach and focuses on hiring best of the breed available in market. It boasts of best practices in HR, Operations, Marketing, Financing and Sales. Somehow among all good things there is a chain of wrong people who are spoiling the show by having connections with high level of international mafia/ gang and thus do not hesitate in getting down to any level of wrongdoing. These wrongdoing culprits are not only weakening the roots of GB2 bank but also getting involved into some extreme crimes.
This interesting story hints on quite a few guys as culprits in the network but who turn out to be innocent and otherwise. Overall it is quite neatly woven and engrossing read that will keep you hooked throughout.