THIS book is an extensively researched novel by an IITian with MBA from IMT. It is basically a murder mystery set within a techno-innovation company called Shivan Computers.
The protagonist of the novel is Maninder Tuten Chatterjee, with a Bengali father and a Sikh mother named Gurpreet and who has been given this strange name because “my mother held on to ‘Maninder’ while my father chose ‘Tuten’ as I was born at 2.10 a.m.”
When he goes to Shivan Computers for a job, his boss Vishnu asks Tuten the reason for wanting to join Shivan Computers. After citing many other reasons, Tuten says, “Sir, I like mysteries. I am a big fan of Sherlock homes, Hercule Poirot, Feluda, Detective Moochwala, Byomkesh Bakshi, Father For…” All this doesn’t please the boss but what earns him the job is his mathematical genius and the ability to solve mysteries as this novel shows.
Tuten is a mathematical whiz-kid and beer-sipping techie with an unsavoury knack for finding patterns and once he chances upon a web chat between two mysterious persons named Hickory and Dickory and learns about a deep conspiracy afoot inside Shivan Computers. Things take a murky turn when a software innovator Dr Sarin is murdered in a packed auditorium by an invisible killer; an unseen assassin who kills the software visionary in a locked room. What is more, a mysterious masked man sabotages a server room and vanishes with LoRD – a cutting-edge software invention from India.
The trouble heightens when Raja, Chairman of Shivan Computers, hatches an accounting fraud of unimaginable proportions by manipulating the accounting books of LoRD.
The answer to every mystery in the book lies locked in a trail of bizarre clues – Bhagwad Gita, CD-ROMs, flutes, Napoleon, Newton, Hitler, Vedic maths, Lord Ganesha, Indus Valley scripts, secret codes and more. The book is an engrossing pass time.
(Rupa Publications Pvt Ltd, 7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110 002; www.rupapublications.com)
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