Victims for Sale by Nish Amarnath has all the necessary ingredients to keep readers engrossed from the beginning to the end. One could relate to the protagonist, Sandy Raman, her insecurities and anxieties and her quest for self-identity in a foreign country where she is a student of journalism and a fledgling investigative journalist.
The book moves at a mind-boggling pace even as the reader is introduced to the different characters of the strange family in London where Sandy is a paying guest. The reader is drawn into a whirlpool of emotions as one spine-tingling incident after another assails the young woman with two male characters thrown in for good measure, who exacerbate the emotional turmoil she undergoes. Amidst a very descriptive narration that brings the city of London alive and three strong characters that guide us through the book, the reader is impelled to comprehend the compulsions of a young, intelligent and ambitious journalist and her inner need to solve mysterious deaths and exploitation of mentally challenged women.
Sandy Raman is a nineteen-year-old journalist from Mumbai who lives as a paying guest with the Sawants, a family based in London. She relocates to London after the death of her boyfriend, Saahil, in the Mumbai bomb blast. Sandy finds an ally in Nirmal, the Sawants’ son but as they grow closer, much to the consternation of the Sawants, she finds his reactions to her gesture of providing succor to his mentally-challenged sister Asha, bizarre and inappropriate.
Sandy also meets Ritchie Johri, a filmmaker from Los Angeles, who is her classmate in London School of Economics where she is doing her Masters in Media and Communication. Things seem to be moving ahead for her professionally, especially when she gets an opportunity to be a BBC TV series producer for a campaign that purports to train special persons.
Till she gets embroiled in a series of murky murders, as people close to her start getting killed.
So, where do things start going wrong? What is the connection between violet teddies and the chaos that Sandy finds herself embroiled in? Why does Nimmy react violently every time she mentions her desire to help Asha? Find out about this and a lot more intriguing suspense-filled incidents by reading this immensely interesting thriller!
The book also raises the important social issue of human rights and the dangers that mentally challenged women face. What baffled readers was the awe-inspiring climax, the sudden shock of exposing the antagonist as well as a glimpse into the psyche of a sociopath. Victims for Sale is different from the run-of-the-mill suspense fiction and is a new approach to thrillers. It’s a book written for readers across all countries.
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About the Author:
Nish Amarnath is a New York-based journalist and an author of three books. Her latest book, Victims for Sale, a psychological thriller and crime suspense novel published by HarperCollins India in 2018, was nominated for the Bombay Film Festival Word-to-Screen Award, likened to a David Fincher movie, and critically reviewed in the U.S. as reminiscent of Megan Abbott and Patricia Highsmith. She is a faculty member at the New York Writers Workshop and a Contributing Editor at The Big Thrill Magazine. Her poetry and writings have appeared in the Washington, D.C.-based literary journal, Del Sol Review, The Wall Street Journal, TheStreet.com, International Business Times (Newsweek) and India Today, among others. She is presently a reporter at Reorg, a news provider backed by private-equity firm Warburg Pincus.