Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup.

After the best seller Q & A, which was eventually made into an oscar winning movie, Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup comes up with his second novel which is a murder mystery.

Vickey Mehta, a rich, notorious playboy and the son of home minister of Uttar Pradesh was not new to crime. He had taken the lives of many people in a hit and run incident when he was young and later had been charged in a black buck hunting case. In all these occassions, he had managed to get away with the help of money and his father's political power. His latest "achievement" will be his acquittal in the Ruby Gill murder case and in the party he throws to celebrate it, Vickey Mehta is shot dead. There are six people in the party who had a revolver in their possession and surprisingly it turns out that all of them had a motive to kill Vickey. The chunk of the book unravels the lives of these six suspects and their motives and finally, the "moment of truth"which without doubt is surprising but which I  thought is not so exciting.

Like in his first novel, Swarup has touched all aspects of life, all strata of society with the story revolving around very diverse personalities such as a bollywood diva, a corrupt politician, a tribal, a mobile thief etc. He has also modeled many incidents in the novel on real incidents like when the Ruby Gill murder case is modeled on Jessica Lal murder case. The pace of the story is lagging at a few places. Vikas Swarup hasn't delivered a perfect "whodunnit" but still this one gets a front row seat among the thrillers by Indian authors.

Looking forward to more from Mr. Swarup, 4 out of 5.