Friday, July 8, 2011

Review: Murder in the Ashram

Murder in the Ashram is Kathleen McCaul’s debut book , a murder mystery revolving around a yoga ashram in Delhi. The book’s synopsis had me hooked. Well anything to do with murder, mystery based in a yoga ashram sounds like fun read. But sadly I was quite disappointed with the book. The book started out as fun but just lost the plot mid way. I felt the book tried to hook in many reasons to show why Yoga ashrams will continue to be enigmatic, intriguing and mysterious forever.

The story goes thus. Ruby Jones moves to Delhi to pursue a career as an international journalist. When her closest friend and flat mate Stephen Newby’s body is pulled out from the Yamuna river she uses her investigative instincts to get to the bottom of who was responsible for her friend’s death. Was it a suicide or a murder? And ,if it was a murder who were the people responsible for it? All these questions keep leading her to Swami Shiva’s ashram where Stephen was a regular. What brings an intriguing angle to the murder is that just a day before his death Stephen writes to Ruby about having found the identity of his yet unknown to the world father.

As she explores deeper her questions take her deep into the world of Indian policing and into the heart of Swami Shiva’s yoga ashram. She realizes that everything is not as calm and peaceful in the ashram as it seems.

What I found was that the author followed a typical pattern of how to handle a book based on an ashram. Let me tell you that I am absolutely no fan of ashrams and yogis but it is a feeling I got while reading the book. To write a book checklist followed is this a) murder b) drugs c) sex D) money e) ashram at the crux of it all. Hence the predictability.

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like a interesting plot especially coz of the Sai baba fiasco, baba ramdev fiasco, Asaram bapu fiasco.. and I presume that is what is probably getting predictability...