Book Review: Fraudster by RV Raman

As a commerce student, it is only fair for me to be inclined towards reading a book that tells a story of corporate India. There’s no gainsaying that reading a debut author is a risk, but the blurb of the book, with a description of the criminal activities, vicious manipulations and corruption, manages to intrigue a prospective reader. And so, it happened with me.

I am sure about the fact that it will keep you glued till the end. To say that it has mind-blowing twists and turns in the plots, seems an understatement. One murder after another, one attack after another, and the writer has craftily kept us guessing till the end who the culprit is.

The author’s experience in the corporate world comes in handy. When I started reading it, I had initially thought that the book will at best, be predictable. As luck would have it, it was everything but. The plot twists outdo themselves every time.
The characters are meticulously etched. One of the senior characters remarks, somewhere before the murders take place in the novel, “Where there is money, there is deceit. With lots of money, there is lots of deceit. Be careful of whom you trust”. Consider this a summary of the plot. From one character to another, as a reader, we have multiple reasons to look at them with suspicion, sympathy, pity, fear. But one thing is crystal-clear: you can love them or hate them, but you cannot ignore them. None of them.

The setting in time is contemporary, which makes it all the more resourceful for us. There are loopholes in IT security, there are unscrupulous practices in auditing, there are investigations which lead to little evidence, or so we think.

I was a little flummoxed in the way the culprit was finally revealed, it somehow lacked the dramatic flair that was otherwise remarkable throughout the novel. Without spoilers, all I can tell is that the culprit is a person you least expect, and someone not even instrumental to the plot. The end is, in no way, disappointing, but it just does not match the grandeur of the rest of the novel.

Here’s a shout out to the fans of Jeffery Archer, Robert Ludlum, John Grisham: you may add Fraudster to your to-read list – it is worth it.