Book Reviews

Book Review: The Bankster by Ravi Subramanian

 I have to start with an apology for making the Blogadda people remind me three times that I needed to post this review. Although I’d finished reading the book the very day I received it this review part took an achingly long time. Hope I don’t get blacklisted or something for this.

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Having read the author’s first book If God Was A Banker I was mighty excited to review this one. The fact that he takes banking as a backdrop for all his stories is quite novel. Showing a profession that is considered noble and ‘bankable’ since always, it is quite exciting to find someone writing not-so-flattering and mostly unheard of horror stories about this not entirely trustworthy common man’s safety net.

When the book began with a person impersonating as someone else, carrying a dirty amount of diamonds with him and dealing with arms, I guessed correctly that the plot was about money laundering (since the author writes on banking only :D). However when the plot about a grieved father who lost his son in a nuclear mishap came up I was thrown off balance and completely not prepared for what was to come next.

Boston Global Bank (GB2) set in Mumbai has a regular set of crooked and opportunistic employees who get involved in extra-marital affairs, bribery, favouritism and the like. Everything is fine till some of their employees get killed in questionable circumstances. Few honest and concerned employees who want to take up the issue are mostly met with a dead end.

The parallel running story of the father who’s bent on making the Government assure the public that the nuclear plant being set up in Devikulam is safe for them is confusing at first but becomes relevant later on. It is only when new characters enter the scene with lots of money and political leverage that the connect can be found.

The book is as thrilling as it promises to be, may be more. There are too many characters but each one has his own importance. The author has succeeded in keeping the suspense intact till the end, and it is something that one cannot easily or may be never guess.

Though I’d like to give the author credit for going the extra mile to make his readers understand the technical bits like the I-cloud thing or the investigation of the assumed suicide of an employee which was actually murder, I found these explanations rather tedious and stretched. I wanted to know what will happen next but wasn’t too keen on getting into too many details.

This book isn’t as much about banking as it is about money laundering and its operations and reach. This is a thriller and the author has stressed more on it. What I like about his writing is that he gives a shade of grey to his characters without making them look bad or evil. This also keeps you guessing who the culprit is till the end.

All in all, this book is a good read if thrillers are your thing. In case you want to know more about banking, go read If God Was A Banker which gives you a lot of knowledge on banking operations.

Edited to add:

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com . Participate now to get free books!

You can find more on the author on his website, Facebook and Twitter.

Website: http://www.ravisubramanian.in/index.asp

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Authorravisubramanian

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SubramanianRavi

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