Book Review: Haunted

So after announcing my comeback, I again took a break!! Sigh!! Lazy and busy life!

When my dear blogger-friend Roshmi suggested my name to read/blog-review an Indian author Douglas Misquita‘s debut action-thriller novel “Haunted”, I was excited. It was to be my first “review on request” post! Douglas contacted me and I received the book promptly to read and review. So here it goes…

About the book –

FBI Special Agent Kirk Ingram’s life is torn apart when his family is brutally murdered before his eyes. Devastated physically and psychologically, he vows to destroy organized crime in all forms.

In the Eastern bloc, a rogue dictator state is stockpiling Citex, a deadly nerve agent…

Across the globe, an international trade house funnels Balkan organized crime activities through its business channels and now hatches a plot to distribute Citex to major cities in the world, creating a nexus with terror that threatens to bring the world order to the point of anarchy.

And only one man stands in the way of global terror and paranoia. One man seeking redemption and waging a personal battle against the demons of his past.

My review –

Pros

# The plot consisting of terrorism, mercenaries, underwater action, hostage situation, FBI, CIA, LAPD, helicopter rides, locales, car chases, gunfire, shoot outs, shades of character, sex, emotions, human relations, loyalty, betrayal, corruption, suspense and revenge is well-paced, exciting, complex yet interesting, imaginative yet realistic and very well-written; especially for an Indian author if we compare it with other such action-thrillers written by the usual foreign authors. Quite unexpected actually!

# The novel seemed very well – researched, quite clear from the details provided in the writing.

# The language is quite lucid and very visual..a reader can just imagine the scenes in their minds while reading. The novel would surely make a great adaptation for a movie.

Cons

# The narrative feels too descriptive sometimes, distracting attention from the flow of the story. Some of it and the background stories could have been done away with to keep the narrative taut.

# The story seems more of an ensemble of several characters with some equally important and seems to be not that much about the protagonist Kirk Ingram who is anyway missing for a few chapters, coming into the picture towards the end.

# Though all the sub-plots, characters and events are brought together at the end, the reader has to read the novel in one go to enjoy the action-thriller fully because if he/she don’t have a good memory, he/she may need to backtrack once in a while which kind of spoils the fun.A smoother flow of the story would have been better.

# The editing of the book has missed out some errors, such as, a character is shot in the head but after few pages his body is mentioned to be found shot in the heart. Then there is “though” instead of “thought”, missing full-stop, i instead of I and unintentional ( as far as I think) incomplete sentences here and there with “-£” written at the end whose significance I didn’t understand.

Nevertheless, these are minor issues and “Haunted” succeeds as a racy, interesting, graphic, cogent, unputdownable international action-thriller début novel which is a delight to read. Take a bow, Douglas Misquita. Waiting for your next novel!

Book Details :-

ISBN: 978-93-80154-95-4

Publisher: Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd (2011)

Price: Rs 350

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