A review by varunob
Conspirator (Inspector Dhruvi, #2) by R.V. Raman

adventurous lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

My introduction to the work of Chennai-based R.V. Raman was pure chance. I happened to come across his third book Saboteur on Amazon last year and was taken in by the cover, black and blue with a shadow loitering around what seemed to be a server room. The book was a corporate thriller (all of Raman’s four till now are) set against the backdrop of a booming e-commerce venture in Bangalore. A thoroughly enjoyable read but more so because Raman did not mind explaining the intricacies of the sector to a virtual novice like me and that too by weaving it into the plot through bits of dialogue rather than a half-page sermon-like paragraph. Insider, Raman’s second novel, shined a light on insider trading in India’s financial capital: Bombay. Once again, he drew up a compelling set of characters, a sticky, potentially dangerous situation and a smart plot. Thus, I was quite keen on reading his latest – Conspirator – which investigates the world of tailored and fake news as well as the wretched nexus of politics and media. 

Conspirator marks the return of Bangalore police inspector Dhruvi Kishore, first introduced to Raman’s readers in Saboteur. The book kicks off in Coorg (or, if you prefer the actual name, Kodagu) with a getaway organised by media baron Nihir Seth for his friends and colleagues. This getaway is rather secretive. It is at a resort Seth is the sethji of (bad, I know!) and there is no record of who the guests are. A large number of them don’t know each other. Things at this rather shady get-together take a turn for the worse when two people die. Inspector Kishore is handed the case but as she is making the journey from Mysore to Coorg, guests start to leave. Now she has a double murder on her hands with quite a few possible suspects already having taken off from the scene of crime. 

As with Saboteur and Insider, Raman gives the reader a bevy of interesting characters: an upright journalist, a young and enthusiastic woman keen on making her mark in the news media, one who has already done so but suffered considerably on her way to the top, a media mogul who has secrets aplenty are just some the reader comes across. It’s nice to see a writer not going down the frankly offensive path of having women in a book only for sexual purposes. No woman in any of Raman’s books comes across as a bimbo or a moll. They all have purposes and are strong characters in their own right. 

Fake news has become a part of almost everyone’s dictionary ever since the time the President of the USA starting talking about it while going about his morning business (I suspect he suffers from constipation or some other shit-based medical issue. Explains his mood). Then there is tailored news. For the unaware, tailored news is news that reports the facts but selectively so and may even shed the objectivity a news report should carry, opting for a subjective point-of-view instead. What Raman’s narrative with regard to this aspect of the novel carries can be gauged from the recent Cobrapost exposé. Makes you think of what is real in today’s day and age, whether anything we read about is actually true or not. Raman also enters the murky political dealings in such sectors of the corporate world: how party IT cells are creating fake facts about their opponents or their own party and putting them up on Whatsapp and Facebook and Twitter. I felt particularly glad about this since I’m always warning people to verify what they send to others and am not exactly a part of the forwarding change.