Assassins by Mukul Deva

"Assassins" by Mukul Deva. This book is published by Forge books in 2015 and has 416 pages. This is Book 2 of Ravinder Gill series. Book 1 was titled 'The dust will never settle' in India and 'Weapon of vengeance' in USA.

Ravinder Gill had resigned and is trying to come to terms with his life & his daughter's death at his hands. Sisters of Benazir (SOB), a terrorist organization lead by Fatima (Benzir's niece), has contracted assassinations of Pervaiz Masharrat (Dictator of Pakistan at the time of Benzir's assassination) and Abid Zardosi (Benzir's husband), in India, to Leon Binder as they were masterminds of Benazir's murder.

Binder happenes to be a very close friend of Sir Edward Kingsley (Director of MI6) and Ravinder Gill during their college days. Gill accepts to lead the taskforce to prevent the assassinations on Indian soil. Can he stop Binder or will he be humiliated again? What's in the past? What score has remained unsettled? What happens to SOB?

Entire story takes place in six days. There are twenty odd chapters in each day. Some of the chapters are only a page long and some only a few lines long. It's an intelligent chapterization.

Although story is good some things keep nagging the seasoned readers. Thus the story becomes semi engaging. It's unbelievable that a hardened assassin, chief of a terrorist organization and a terrorist mole in Indian intelligence talk freely over unsecured phones using real names (I had same observation on author's previous books as well) and that an assassin meets his employer in person in open. Use of WhatsApp and Dropbox for exchanging sensitive information is also baffling. This is recklessness. The assassin spelling his name backward for his most important identity is laughable.

Generally the protagonists in thrillers are depicted as impeccable superhumans. Here Mukul had given them touches that are more like common humans (e.g. The assassin has a stomach upset, he sleeps in unsecured location due to exhaustion, Gill is ill at ease with computers etc.). Gill, the assassin and the mole all forget to do something vital every now and then that allows the story to go on.

Vishal is shown as an orphan who does not know his parents, then how come he has got a cousin? Looks like an avoidable error.

Pakistani characters are based on real life figures. Author has altered the names only slightly making it apparent, even for a naive reader. Benzir's assassination is described in great detail.

A new thing is a terrorist organization (SOB - Pun intended?) run by women, a sisterhood. However it's not clear why head of such an organization behaves in amateurish way. Binder accepting the assignment despite knowing of the leak and despite having a bad feeling about it is also inexplicable. A professional assassin who has 36 hits to his credit suddenly throws all caution to the wind for the sake of revenge, not convincing.

Ravinder Gill thrillers seem to be a personal matter for Gill. In first book it was his daughter and in this it's his one time best friend. His past haunts him and gives him nightmares. It makes him more human. He also loses his close family member in each book. At this rate, the series can not go beyond three books.

Why is the book titled Assassins? Not clear. Probably a more appropriate title would have been Assassinations!

An OK book, not a must read.