Periodical Gazette

Compass Box Killer by Piyush Jha is a fantastic crime thriller with a lot of twists and turns which no one will ever forget because of it's uniqueness and an outstanding narrative by the author.It stars Police Inspector Virkar who must stop a series of killings by a fiendishly clever killer before it is too late. The first victim is a senior police officer named, Akurle, who died after eating Vada Pav mixed with ricin, a lethal poison extracted from Castor Beans. Each killing pattern is different, the only thing that doesn't change is, he leaves a note of the next victim inside a compass box written in blood. Now Inspector Virkar must find the killer before he shatters another life.Each time Inspector Virkar attempts to save the victims, he is taken by surprise because of the Super intelligent, brilliant mind of the killer. The motive behind the killings was the one thing I least expected. All the victims seemed really nice with a clean background, but as the proverb saying goes "Do not judge a person by their appearance". I was also very excited and at the same time thrilled to know the fact , after he has killed three people, the killer doesn't know who his next victim is and silently seeks the help of Inspector Virkar to kill him. You can't help yourself from laughing out loud at this particular scene.The pace of the novel in the beginning was a bit slow but will keep you engaging. There is a lot of repeating, like for example, the details of food and drinking habits of Inspector Virkar were repeated again and again which I hated. What I did like in the novel was the sudden turn out of events by those people whom he trusted more, and later when he was thinking everything is going to end, he is betrayed by the one whom he had the most faith in. This novel gives a great insight of the media people and their quest for fame. There are some Marathi words which I initially mistook for hindi words because of my average knowledge of the language. If you don't know either of these language, you may well likely to laugh while reading those sentences.On the whole, this is the kind of novel you won't be able to put down. Even if you try to put it down, you can't help yourself from getting back into reading the novel again. This is a very compelling , quick entertaining read. It doesn't bore you and has the great potential of becoming a blockbuster movie.