’The Sinister Silence’ – A title that readily caught my attention, when I was surfing for some thrillers on a common e-commerce website. That was the beginning. After all these days, since I have finished reading the book, the twisted climax of crime thriller is still afresh in my mind. Not only that, being an avid reader of new-age crime-based novels, undoubtedly, I found this book reading experience one of a kind.

I would not divulge any spoilers here, but the story begins well as a whodunnit when middle class businessman Rakesh Ponkshe is murdered by two men and his corpse thrown into a pond to eliminate evidence. So, who killed Rakesh and why? Well, you’ll obviously have to read the book to find out. I liked the climax and the couple of twists involved there. The story has a pace and is perfect like a delicious midnight snack that you devour fast before anyone else finds out.

Along with an interesting storyline, the book also has a subtle but relevant commentary on the socio-economic conditions in those days — when the country slipped into the British rule, famines forced common people to retort to extreme measures to survive, widowed women had literally no life — these and more. The police procedures when there is no technology to crack cases is interesting in the second half of the book.