Book Review – The Bankster

Yesterday when i was just about to reach my cab to office the courier guy delivered me this book. It was from blogadda and i was one of the people selected to review a book called “The Bankster” by Ravi Subramanian. I have heard a lot of good things about his book “If God was a banker”. I opened this book to read it in the cab, one hour journey from home. The usual long ride to office was over in a jiffy yesterday.

Today our office declared holiday because of rough whether and i got a chance to complete the whole book by today and then understood why Ravi Subramaniam is called as John Grisham of Banking.

I was scared before I took this book because banking is the last thing i would be able to understand but the author was so clear in explaining things that happened in the novel.

The story is about a Foreign Bank and its operations and employees. Suddenly few of their employees are getting killed in mysterious circumstances. One in Vienna and two in India. The bank is in catch 22 situation on whether to go to police or open internal investigation. Truth reveals itself when the CEO chooses the third option.

On a parallel line there is a CIA arms dealer and Anti nuke plant activist stories develop till you know their relationship to each other.

The characters : I am not going into details about each and every character because if you are going to read the book it may spoil the fun. To put it simply the characters are well thought out. And they dont change much over the course of time. But almost at the end of the novel the reader may realize the author had played mind games and he was the one who misinterpreted everything.

The Story line : The narration was impeccable. It starts slowly so as the new readers like me would understand the operations of banking and once the author is sure of creating a platform the roller coaster arrives to take you for a ride.

Also he has touched one of the sensitive issues which is rocking Tamilnadu in particular. And in a matured way too. Some of the things like German scientist getting deported and name of particular agencies which does the background checks seems so real.

The Verdict : I would surely recommend this. Particularly for the second half of the book which is racier. But what I cant understand is some cliches like a female assisting the guy who is investigating. It has become too cliched to use anymore. I think the guy was well off by himself. What made this a great novel is the epilogue.

The Bankster is a wonderful read.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com . Participate now to get free books!