God is a gamer by Ravi Subramanian

"God is a gamer" by Ravi Subramanian. This book is published by Penguin in 2014 and has 310 pages. This is Ravi's sixth book.

Many stories run in parallel. An influential US senator is assassinated. Credit cards of New York bank are compromised. BPO processing the outsourcing of card transactions is hacked. An internet website selling narcotics is investigated, but no one knows where it is operated from. Bitcoins is used as currency. President of New York bank India operations commits suicide. FBI and CBI start investigations. An online game goes viral on Facebook.

Are these seemingly unrelated incidents actually related? What is the Bitcoin angle? How is the bank involved? Why is US President interested?

Ravi is a master of banking thrillers. Here he has woven a thriller around Bitcoins with banking as background. Since Bitcoins is a virtual and unregulated currency, it's use for  illegal transactions is used as the central theme. Author has a knack of story telling.

Peculiarity of this book is that author has used the persons and companies in real life in this book. Obama, Facebook, Bitcoins, Sony etc appear in the story. Instead of his favorite Great Boston bank, it's the New York bank this time in the book.

Since too many stories run in parallel, readers have to be attentive. Names and incidents have to be remembered till they converge. But readers do it naturally as the story arrests them. Readers are on the edge of the chair as mystery unravels.

However there are some loose ends which are not closed properly. Example: Why was Swami killed and who killed him? Why was cataract of Sarawate introduced at all? How can Satoshi not share profits with other founders? Who killed the hooker? Why Cotton Trail 2.0 was promoted anonymously?

Ravi has tried to maintain the suspense till the end and has introduced a shocking twist at the end, but I was able to guess the culprit. Special mention should also go to good cover design.

An excellent book. A must read.