Tuesday, 27 September 2022

The Unexpected Trail: Murder in the Building-Nisha B. Thakur

Book: The Unexpected Trail: Murder in the Building
Author: Nisha B. Thakur
Publisher: Self Published

Can hate drive you to murder?

After years of struggle, Tanvi is living the dream. Raj, the love of her life, has proposed to her to marry him, and things are hunky dory. It seems her love has defeated all the obstacles. But unfortunately, her happiness is cut short when she discovers a dead body. A man has died by suicide in her kitchen. She doesn’t know who the man is. She wonders how did the man enter her apartment. As the investigation proceeds, more baffling questions arise, leading her wedding ceremony and relationship with Raj into deep water. Then, when she thinks it can’t get any worse in this horrifying crisis, she is labelled as the prime accused. Suicide or Murder or Conspiracy? Read the tale of Unexpected Suspense in The Unexpected Trail by Nisha B. Thakur.

The premise of the book is an exciting one with a set of characters who have something to hide, and a death of a depressed person in an apartment complex which looks like a suicide. The book opens on a promising note and the first few chapters sound interesting as the characters are introduced and the plot is set in motion. As the story progresses, the plot starts sounding repetitive and while the scenarios might be different, the situations become disinteresting because the death takes a back seat. The author explores the backstories of the various characters, possibly to zero in on the motive for the murder, but that leads to the spotlight on the people, rather than the situations. The writing has a nice pace and the overall story moves at a comfortable yet quick pace. The concept that the story has been based on is well planned, and the level of complexity that the author has thought of is commendable. The climax, however, suffers because of that complexity and I felt that too much information was pushed in at the end, and I think it would have been better if those revelations would have been spaced out a bit. The book needs another round of editing because the grammatical errors are a bit too many, and after a point they start affecting the reading experience, and at the risk of sounding finicky, the plot makes it seem that the title of the book has a typographical error as well.

Coming to the characters, Nisha gathers an interesting set of characters, all of whom seem to have a motive for the crime, including the Deven, and at a certain point it does seem like a suicide. Tanvi’s character is interesting, especially the way in which it turns out in the climax. Another intriguing character is that of Raj, and the way he steers the story is impressive. Neha and Adi as a couple are quite contemporary and quite apt in the role they have been cast in.

Overall, this is a story that has quite a bit of potential and with a serious round of editing, it can turn out to be a whodunnit to reckon with. The book scores a 3.56/5 for me.

Get your copy of the book on Amazon here.

I was provided a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

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