P.J. Chevalier, the author does an awesome job in captivating the readers with true thrills of detective adventures and has provided enough twists and turns to enchant the reader into reading the entire book at once before laying it to rest. Rich in history, the book explains Parsee norms and beliefs while successfully portraying the customs of the Nagas and English as well. Set in the 1920s, the true condition of India as shown by a fiction writer is quite interesting and often probed me to look to the Wikipedia for more information.
The protagonists Beram from the Parsee Society and Sexton Blake, an internationally renowned detective lock horns when a photo has been taken of the revered Tower Of Silence. Beram has been shown to be as cool as any of the heroes in Justice League and is a master tactician and ventriloquist. He often uses clever deceptions and disguises to mislead the expert English detective. However, Mr. Blake is no fool either and he has his own tricks and network of spies to stop things from getting out of hand. The battle of wits and the turn of events put to shame even the best detective novels like Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes. In short, I would call this nothing short of a masterpiece.
Frankly, I believe that the book requires no changes and is a perfect read. However, the end is a bit groggy and could have been better explained. Though I cannot reveal the parts (they would be spoilers) which I believed needed a bit of improvement, the shortcomings and a few unexplained facts actually make the book more irresistible to put down. I sincerely thank Mr. Gyan Prakash for having brought this lost novel to light and Harper Collins for helping him publish it. A must read for all the inquisitive and imaginative folks of the subcontinent.
This book has been provided by Indiblogger and Harper Collins under the Book Review Program.
