Before we begin discussing the literary merit of the book, To Die of a Name, let us first look at who the book is targeted at and the channels it is marketed through. There are no pretensions on these counts. The book is a novella that is being sold exclusively through one single e-commerce platform, Amazon. The format is one designed exclusively for Kindle, a proprietary platform for Amazon users. This will help us define the target audience for the book – tech-savvy educated, and if we assume certain correlations to be true, young. The book is a short one and so we can also assume the book is intended to be a good short read that one can get done with in a few hours.

With this background in mind, the book meets its objectives in that it is fast, quick, and enjoyable. The story is not very twisted or convoluted and proceeds smoothly. The style of narration is linear. The story of the book is narrated by Alekhya, a Mumbai based journalist originally hailing from small town Berhampore in Orissa. He is asked by his mother to return to the town immediately but is kidnapped as soon as his plane lands in Orissa by the District Magistrate who informs him of the strange turn of events that have taken place in his absence. The son of his mother’s friend is accused of murdering the brother-in-law of the District Magistrate and the only witness happens to be the accused’s sister, who is now under the care of Alekhya’s mother. To make matters more complicated, the whole town views the relation between Alekhya’s mother and her friend with suspicion. The girl, Lali Pradhan, on the other hand, seems to have been in a state of trance as she has no recollection of what happened and keeps talking of strange dreams.

The District Magistrate makes Alekhya the offer of saving his family if he finds out from his mother where the accused is and hands him over to the Magistrate. Alekhya keeps getting involved in the mystery and discovers that a bipolar crime nexus is being run in the town, the two key players being the District Magistrate himself and a gang-lord for whom the accused used to work. The story keeps getting entangled further and it is left to our protagonist to find out the truth and at the same time save himself and his family.

The story tries to pull off two very different genres at the same time – drama and mystery. The book looks at the troubled relation that Alekhya has with his mother and her friend’s family. He tries to come to terms with harsh realities about his dead father and the friendship that his mother shares with Sirisha, the accused’s mother. At the same time, it also tries to look at the situation in the accused’s household. Shibu, the accused, is responsible for killing his father because he was a compulsive wife-beater and didn’t spare his son and daughter as well in drunken fits. Lali’s own growing mind is explored in the multiple dreams that the author talks of. At the same time, the author tries getting a murder mystery going with some twists and turns.

Over a hundred pages, the book tries to do way too many things than is possible. The result is that it ends up becoming a non-convincing narration of an otherwise compelling tale. The author does really well when he talks of the deep human emotions while building the various dramatic sub-plots where the perspective is always that of an evolving Alekhya or of the subtle feelings that Lali’s young mind goes through as she recuperated from the shock of the murder. However, the action is not gripping and the mystery is not developed properly to engage the audience. The writing in conversational parts is too drawn out to get any sense of thrill going in the reader’s minds. The chapter where the mystery is explained is haphazard and forced.

The writing oscillates from excellent to average over the course of the book. The distinction is more pronounced in the difference the writer brings to the dramatic portions of the book compared to the mystery sections. The emotions that the writer wraps around Lali’s character are a joy to read. Sadly, no other character is given the same treatment, not even Alekhya whose inner demons reveal their claws but not their faces. Some other characters that could have easily drawn a lot of sympathy are Alekhya’s mother and her friend Sirisha. However, they are undercooked and to some extent served raw. This speaks for the character development of the book which we can safely call insufficient.

The plot development is good, with the story very clearly thought out and executed. The smaller plot elements used throughout the book help take the story forward and build interest. However, the writer misses extracting the maximum from the story as some of the key scenes are not fleshed out properly. Perhaps over 200 more pages, we would have had a brilliant read which one could treasure for a long time. It turns out to be a good short one-time read that doesn’t linger in the mind for long. The other reviews of the book seem more encouraging than this piece, so you may want to try out this short novella once.

The book can be bought here: To Die of a Name, by Minakhi Misra