An absolute thriller

Shobha Nihalani’s ‘Unresolved’, is a statement that Indian authors have it in them to write thrillers that can hold your imagination

If you’re in search of a thriller right off the top drawer and have a thing for books that are closer to home, your search ends here.

Shobha Nihalani’s ‘Unresolved’ takes you on a ride from inside the mind of ‘Maya’ and while you are at it, makes you fall hopelessly in love with her style of writing.

Simple, straightforward and crisp, ‘Unresolved’ is a fine example of what happens when Indian authors decide to write a good thriller. The book, more than anything, is a statement that Indian authors have it in them to write thrillers that can hold your imagination.

The book is a story about a woman named ‘Maya’ who is happily married and living a life. But soon, her ghosts of being ‘paranoid’ catch up as she starts doubting her husband, Deepak – who is a cop. She plays out stories in her head and stumbles upon a lot of things before the line between reality and her imagination starts to fade.

With a quick establishment of characters, the book gets quickly into the plot. This is followed by a series of revelations that come one after the other in quick succession. Each of them is equally important to the plot of the story. But what makes the book stand out is the major twist in the tale – a real icing on the cake.

The narrative is quick and just as you feel that the characters are settling in too well, Maya transforms herself into something that you haven’t imagined until then, just because Shobha made sure she kept the readers distracted well enough.

The book involves a lot of drama in every aspect – from emotional to action and uses a very fine technique to create a new villain in your head every 30 pages. All this, while sticking to its theme of telling the story of the people who suffer with mental illness in silence. An element of the damage done by domestic abuse also smartly makes its way through into the story without you noticing it until you have finished reading the book.

A fairly quick read; and if you are a thrill junkie, this book will make you go from one end to the other in one shot. Being hailed as the author’s finest books from all corners, we surely recommend you to give this book a crack.