Book Review: Return of the Trojan Horse by Amit Dubey

 

Book Review: Return of the Trojan Horse - Tales of Criminal Investigation - by Amit Dubey

This one was different.

 

There are 3 novella in the book – 3 independent stories from the point of view of the same central character – our protagonist – who helps the police solve crimes using his tech wizardry and tech tools.  

 

The 3 stories are not connected and can be read independently in any order. The stories are good in themselves. The stories inform and educate the average reader about how technology is changing the crime fighting. The stories have their twists and turns – real or fictional – making them interesting to read.

 

What is also good to see is that the author is not just highlighting and glorifying the technology contribution to crime fighting. He has given due consideration and weightage to the sheer age-old human ingenuity which is the real tool to crime fighting.

 

Interesting characters and nice plot to the story with good suspense. An interesting cover design too …

 

Well, that was all the positive I had. Now I will come to the things that I did not like about the book or let’s say, things that need a lot of improvement.

The author needs to work on his story telling. I would have expected the Publisher to give that feedback to the author and help the author sharpen his writing, create a better narration and suitably edit the writing to bring in more punch.

The story telling feels like a plain simple narration of the events rather than suspenseful dramatization with partial revealing of facts and inner thought processes. The story is as good as the story-telling and the author needs to polish his story telling skills or get some help in writing his stories with more punch.

Crime stories need to be exciting, should have a strong element of suspense, edge-of-the-seat story-telling and a non-stagnating flow of events. The real life is not exactly like this so even when you are building a fictional tale based on real life incidents and experiences, you got to take some creative liberties and hold the reader in your story.

One problem with first-person story telling is that you can narrate only what you can see in front of you. Any event or conversation happening in your absence; you can’t narrate it.  In one of the stories, the author is in one place and there is a gun-fight happening in the other. The narration of this particular scene in first person is not a good idea. In fact, the author should have narrated what he heard on the phone and how the inspector reacted to what he heard. Later on, he could have had a hawaldar narrate the actual eyewitness account and fill the gaps. That would have made for an interesting reading.

Hopefully the author has more exciting stories that he can tell and with improved writing, his books are sure bestsellers.

 

Rating: 3/5