Piggies on the Railway is scheduled for release in February and since I know the book was already in production as of late December 2009, I should get my author copies soon. Anytime now. Yippee!
It’s rather strange that I’m eagerly awaiting my copies of the second book. I was nowhere near as excited as I am now during Kkrishnaa’s release. In fact I wrote about it at the time. I wrote about how it was actually quite a letdown.
I held the freshly minted book in my hand, expecting to bond with it like a mother with her newborn. Strangely, I felt quite the opposite. Like the creature I had just given birth to couldn’t possibly be mine. And no, not in a Rosemaryish-I-couldn’t-have-mothered-the-ugly-red-devil-spawn kinda way either. It was more of a detached, ‘hunh, so that’s what was inside the baby bump’ kinda way.
Anyway, I guess the reason I’m so excited about Piggies, and apprehensive, is because it is, in a sense, a career high. A tangible result. KRA accomplished. One book can be a fluke. Two books makes it a career.
So, although I have been told Piggies is a better, funnier, more intricate book than Kkrishnaa, it is also a bigger book. Literally, too. At 1,00,000 plus words, you’ll probably need a use a stand while reading it. You know, the kind that you use to prop up religious books. Kidding. It is hardly ‘the book’ although I’m, hoping it will be one when it comes to defining crime fiction in India.
Piggies on the Railway – A Kasthuri Kumar Mystery, the definitive modern Indian crime fiction novel. I kinda like the sound of that.
When tall, suave, handsome Kaustav Kapoor walks into her office, ditzy private investigator Kasthuri (aka Katie) Kumar has anything but detection on her mind. He is, after all, a scion of Bollywood’s first family—perhaps he has a role for her? Perhaps she will, at last, get to sashay down the red carpet in a designer gown, with flash bulbs following her every move?
But Kapoor’s intentions are much more prosaic: he wishes Katie to trace the heroine of his new blockbuster (and, if Katie’s read the glossies correctly, his life) who is mysteriously AWOL. Despite her misgivings, Katie finds herself unable to refuse the task entrusted to her, and thereon follows a bewildering hunt for the film star across a trail of corpses.
And if that isn’t excitement enough, she has to contend with the maddening and mysterious, but, oh-so-hot, Tejas Deshpande.
The first in a brand new detective series.
IN BOOKSTORES NOW.
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