The Sinister Silence - A real page turner!

Crime fiction and I go back a long way. When I was a child I used to love reading Nancy Drew stories. The red-haired sleuth with her enthusiastic approach to solving mysteries captured my imagination and I spent many a happy hour reading the stories, curled up on my bed. As I grew older, I got introduced to Agatha Christie and her brand of crime and mystery books. What can I say about the master of crime fiction? The intelligent and subtle way she drew out the plots had me in a thrall. Till date I enjoy reading her whenever I get a chance. In the recent years, I have also developed an addiction for watching crime shows, particularly, Law & Order SVU, which I download and watch. My husband gets amazed when we go for a thriller movie and I can guess where the body is buried or immediately know which story the movie has been based on. 

So, when my good friend, Moitrayee Bhadhuri, wrote her first book, “The Sinister Silence”, a crime thriller, I was excited about reading it. It was quite an experience reading this book. The thing that most struck me was how well she described the IT industry and the way it works. The young crowd, coffee breaks, the meeting rooms, the “onsite” in lieu of a promotion – I could identify with it all.  Using the IT industry as a base, Moitrayee sketched her characters very well and kept me guessing till the last page as to who the killer was. I particularly liked the way she has written Mili Ray – her detective. Tough, strong, confident yet with her own set of faults – Mili is the 21^st century woman most of us aspire to be. She is a woman in a man’s world doing her job with competence and panache. I do not want to say too much about the plot, since I could be giving away key details, which would spoil it for anyone wanting to read the book.  Suffice to say, that I read it at one go and enjoyed every minute of it. The only complaint I have is that I feel it ended too soon. I could have done with reading a few more hundred pages. A toast to Moitrayee for her first book! I am eagerly waiting for the next one now…