A breath of fresh air in the stale world of Indian detective fiction, this book is the third of the Reema Ray Mystery series, the first two being The Masala Murder and Dead in a Mumbai Minute. Titanium is a top security agency of India, founded by young Shayak Gupta. Reema Ray is one of its employees. She is tall, young, attractive, and also in love with Shayak who has earlier turned her down. The love angle is an essential part of the narrative, making Reema take all sorts of risks in tracking down a conspirator defaming Titanium and its founder. Reema shaves off her head and, with colleague Terrence, goes undercover to the ashram of guru George Santos. Goa-based and blue-eyed, George Santos preaches to an affluent, unhappy and adoring lot of people. (Not an uncommon phenomenon in Goa, I hear.). Two years earlier, the Mumbai police had confiscated a drug haul and this had ended in an explosion killing five people including a DCP named Daanish Alam. It is the trail of this crime that Reema and Terrence follow.
November 2016, volume 40, No 11