Murdrum: The Probe Begins-Dr. Sohil Makwana

Book: Murdrum: The Probe Begins
Author: Dr. Sohil Makwana
Publisher: Notion Press

What if you encounter a case with decapitated heads in your first assignment?

Murdrum: The Probe Begins by Dr. Sohil Makwana tells the story of Komal, a CBI Intern who finds a body with two mysterious dots on the body. As she brings in the latest in forensic technology to the fore and Human DNA is extracted from a mosquito’s stomach and a human face is regenerated through DNA, the race is to find a horrific and sadistic serial killer who is killing ruthlessly and targeting a specific set of people. The question is, would the advances in technology be able to find the killer and stop him before the numbers start increasing exponentially?

The concept of the book is interesting, and the author has researched extensively to incorporate the best of the forensic tools available today. He has introduced the idea of a serial killer with a signature, and this is what keeps the reader hooked to the happenings in the plot. The story is quite detailed with the author focusing on auditory as well as olfactory cues to set the scenes at places. The storytelling is primarily linear with some flashbacks which I think would make sense once we see more books in the series. However, there are things that need to be improved to enhance the reading experience. Firstly, the book has quite a lot of issues with grammar and editing. There are spelling mistakes as well as sentence construction issues that need to be taken care of. Secondly, at times the details in the story are unnecessary and that needs to be looked into in the second round of editing. Towards the end, the plot is a bit muddled up and I think a cleaner climax would have made more sense to encourage the reader to pick up the next book.

Coming to the characters, the author has created an interesting set of characters that gel well with the plot. Komal’s character as a forensic expert is well crafted and the same is demonstrated throughout the plot. However, the character arc remains constant, and we don’t see much of a difference in her character development over the course of the plot. The other characters are good, but the development is rather limited as there are a lot of supporting characters in the story. I would, however, like to see how this shapes up in the next part.

Overall, a story with a good premise that could have been edited well. It scores a 3.38/5 for me.

Get a copy of the book here.