Spies, Lies & Red Tape-Amit Bagaria

Book: Spies, Lies & Red Tape

Author: Amit Bagaria

Publisher: Notion Press

What would happen if the Armed Forces of a country were made a slave to one person’s personal whims and fancies, that too someone who focuses more on her home state rather than the national interest as a whole?

Spies, Lies and Red Tape by Amit Bagaria is set in the year 2019-2020 when a coalition government comes up, cobbled up due to the inability of the incumbent to secure the majority in the General Elections. Despite Winning only 35 seats in the elections, the Neelima Gupta is chosen as the Prime Minister because she refused to support the government otherwise. Known to be loyal to her state and her vote bank, she takes some decisions that are merely a part of appeasement politics and nothing else. On the other side of the border, Imran Ul-Haq, Special Secretary-China and Far East-Ministry of Foreign Affairs befriends the newly appointed Minister in the Chinese embassy at Islamabad-Wang Li. He gets close to her and things start getting comfortable. While in the north, Brigadier Farooq Hussain, Defence Attaché at the Embassy of Pakistan in Moscow comes across a beautiful Katya Petrov, an agent of the FSB. Things take a turn when Indian defence camps get attacked by terrorists and instead if responding, Neelima Gupta decides to extend an olive branch to our neighbor and goes to sign a treaty. Her aircraft takes off from Islamabad at 7.45 am PKT and was expected to land in India at 9.10 am IST. Slowly, it changes routes and is suddenly diverted towards south and the Air Traffic Controller at IGIA, New Delhi contacts the Air Force, but gets no response. In other tun of events, soldiers of the Indian Army and tanks start arriving at important government offices in New Delhi. What was happening? Was the plane carrying the Indian cabinet hijacked? Was it a military Coup?

Spies, Lies and Red Tape by Amit Bagaria is written in a very crisp and no-nonsense manner. The plot is nicely crafted, and the title does full justice to the plot as we see that Spies, Lies and red tape are the backbone of the happenings of the story. The story outlines how political will is something that forms an important aspect of the defence mechanism of a country. The book also shows how important does intelligence and the spy network of a country is in order to either save it or to create havoc in another. Lastly, it brings out the fact that no matter now powerful the Legislature might become, it should always put the national interest first or it will surely be put to task by the patriots. Though a fictional story, the plot looks relatable at many points. The thrill is maintained till the end and the politics of it all just amazed me.

Talking about the characters, Amit has created some very amazing characters in the book. Though completely fictional, one can wonder if they have seen shades of these characters in the world around us. Talking in detail about them is a spoiler so I’ll suggest one reads the book in the manner it is written, specially some of the pronunciations and I am sure you’ll get the hang of the book.

For me, Spies, Lies and Red Tape was a wonderful experience and I’ll really like another book of this sort to be penned by the author.

The book managed to pry out 4 knowledge points out of 5 before my Spy decided to shut up!