My First Indian Thriller

-- Quite a Shocker of a Book

Edit- 10-May-2014, I just realized throughout the entire post I never mentioned the book name and for sometime I felt I may have written it for some other blog. Let me tag the book for future reference. The book I took up is - Bougainvillea House by Kalpana Swaminathan.

Thanks to Hindu’s Literary Review I found such a book does exist. Truth to be told I took this book as it costs much less than ‘Fireproof’ and also has more pages to it than the other. I know that’s dumb but money was tight.




Anyways it is completely different kind of thriller that I have ever encountered. As one of the reviewers said it is psychological thriller that plays with your mind as you read along.
Clarice is an old lady suffering from motor neuron disease which has over the years has weakened her sense of well-being. She is taken care by her daughter Marion and her maid
Pauline. Marion is 37, still a virgin. Clarice is lady who wants nothing Indian and always craves for western ideologies and embraces their culture to the tilt in manner of food, clothing or general behavior. Marion’s and Pauline’s life are lead by her leash, each controlled in a different way. Her character is a myriad composition of doubtfulness, shrewdness, guileful and utterly lacking any feelings of love or compassion. It evokes so much hatred and you start wondering how a person can ever be so unpractical and cruel to fellow beings. This is one character that stays with you long after you finish reading the book.
The other principal characters that hold the book together include Detective Perera, Sharifa - Khan’s Wife, Sister Abby and Rajesh (the man from police). Sister Abby is someone who provides much needed mental ease needed by patients and who plays a greater role in bringing out the dead skeletons from the closet. Sharifa is a practical lady who understands the distress faced by her husband and provides a meaningful interpretations and good advices to ease the burden of her husband.

Coming to the story, she is brought to Bougainvillea house, Goa because of some of the unfortunate events that took place at Mumbai that has affected all the family especially Marion. Her well-being is taken care of Dr. Liaqat Khan. He recommends another doctor by the name Justin who is at Goa for Clarice. Justin resembles a lot like Clive, Clarice’s late husband and this upsets Clarice a lot as she sees fondness growing between Justin and Marion. It is then we see deaths happening one after the other. And somehow each death makes Clarice more and more weak to a point where she goes deaf-blind-and numb at the same time.

Why are these deaths happening and how are they related to the family? What is it in the past that rankles her mind so much as to make her so protective and over-caring for Marion? How is it that 56 year old lady who finds so much difficulty to stand on her own needing more than enough hours to sleep is somehow linked to all the deaths happening? Is she really capable? Are there going to be any more deaths? How safe are Sister Abby, Pauline and Marion? When should we draw the line between being sane and insane? There are many more unexplained things that slowly start to unravel themselves as the story proceeds along and this forms the crux of the story.


When I came across some of the medical terms in the initial part of the book I thought this might turn out to be one of those Robin Cook’s book with predictable escapist formula. But it is not so. Those are given as an idea to the readers to impart certain facts about the old age disease as the author himself is a doctor.

The book is not without a dose of humor though especially the parts with Liaqat and his wife or when he is with Perera debating whether he has done the right thing or the wrong thing. The suspense is well maintained throughout the book and the climax is one of the best I have ever come across since ‘Messiah’.

An highly recommended book to read. Don’t miss it.