‘The Claim’ is a crime thriller by Sanjay Bordia. Since I haven’t had read a crime thriller for quite a while, I picked the book up with a keen interest and with an expectation to read an intriguing crime mystery. The book starts off well and builds a nice suspense around the accidental death of a young entrepreneur Prabhat Mehra.
The story opens with these lines - “Car skids in gorge, young life lost” was the headline of a small news item on the fifth page of the newspaper.
Prabhat Mehra had taken out a life insurance policy for a hefty amount of Rupees 10 Crores from ‘3M Chandani Group’. K.P. Mehra, father of Prabhat Mehra and his twin brother Prakash Mehra, files the insurance claim but the accidental death of Prabhat Mehra only after a couple of months of taking out the insurance policy and the large sum of insurance claim raises a suspicion around the genuineness of the claim. The insurance company asks its internal auditor Mohan to investigate the case. Mohan along with his young, gorgeous and chirpy assistance Laila and another sharp and astute internal auditor Narsimha Rao aka Iceberg sets out on the investigation only to find that all papers and evidence are in order to prove the case genuine and yet giving him an eerie feeling that something isn’t right.
The story is gripping, characters of Mohan and Laila are well developed and especially Laila’s fondness for food and making parodies of Hindi movie songs using names of food items keeps readers amused. However, at the same time Mohan’s strange habit of quoting from Mahabharat every now and then feels irky after a couple of occasions. Also the story going back and forth making rounds of some subplots not bearing any direct relation to the central plot breaks the pace of the story. Though the story is intriguing, almost at the halfway through the story you can make an easy guess where the story is going to end.
Overall it’s an interesting read and you will like it if you are a crime fiction lover, but some minor flaws in the story narration and predictability of the end will also disappoint you at the same time. I would give the book 3 stars.
