Brutal is an action thriller which follows a few days in the lives of two broken individuals. They are brave reporters, but their investigation into a case leads them into a deathly spiral. Here is a summary of the book: “Death penalty looms over a schoolteacher who commits a heinous crime with absolutely no motive. The nation wants revenge, and an obscure vigilante group delivers it brutally, even before the trial could begin. Just when the world thinks that the bloody saga is over, two journalists dig deeper into the case. And so begins their nightmare. Treading over bodies of their leads and chased by assassins, they will soon realize that some mysteries should better be left untouched.”
Brutal – Book Review. Rating: 3/5
Brutal is a crime thriller which gets of the mark quickly and maintains a decent pace for more than half the book. The book follows the investigation of two journalist from the illustrious Globe news, Prakash Sinha and Seema Sharma who look into the public assassination of a murderer, to uncover the murky underworld business of a powerful Indian family . Though the book sets a scene which is possible in the world today, the characters sadly do not seem to act accordingly, and the type of behavior they sometimes exercise is not believable to say the least.
The book has a good pace to it and maintains readability , we soon fall into the story and the different characters bring their own mystery to the story and we start to wonder how they all piece together. This I feel is the books biggest strength and also its biggest weakness as it fails to maintain this urge till the end. That being said, I think how it changes gears from a slow investigative novel to an all out shooting war is seamless and well done and few books can boast that.
There are many different types of characters in the book, from a billionaire who came from rags to riches to the ever dependable sidekick who gets the information needed. The one character that stood out for me was the assassin who is well written and gave the book a new aspect which it badly needed. What I really liked about the two heroes is that they weren’t shown as super heroes who could get out of any situation they fall in but they relied on luck and a bit of brain activity to get out of sticky situation ,even if the luck factor was a bit on the high side .Both Prakash and his sidekick of sorts Mirnal provided good banter amongst each other which also helps in the overall character development of the two. Towards the end of the book, new characters were introduced but it was done in a hurried and disappointing fashion so much that their short lived roles in the book were a fading memory to the reader moments after completing the book, in some ways they felt unnecessary to the book as a whole.
Though the book shows initial promise, it trails of in the end and becomes just a distant memory of what it could have been. Their was a real sense of suspense and mystery on what the different motives could be but the book seemed to focus more on action sequences and on how it could incorporate more of it after a certain a point. Certain characters seemed redundant and their very presence seemed like a way of getting the characters from point A to point B. All in all Brutal is a good book and certainly a good read even though the ending was not upti the mark, it will keep you glued so that you can reach the end which in itself is satisfactory.
This review was written by Vivek Jaykumar who is an avid reader and a BTech graduate in Mechanical Engineering from NIT Calicut.