ARC Review: Murder In A Minute by Shouvik Bhattacharya

“People are essentially good, until they are caught.”

When a young woman is found lifeless in a pool of her own blood, everyone is convinced that it is her college sweetheart who murdered her.
The victim’s step-brothers, Rishabh and Arya aren’t so convinced. They embark on a journey to unearth the truth, a journey riddled with fallacies and conspiracies, planted intentionally to trap them.
Is there a connection between a missing blue envelope, a misplaced sweater and stray footprints in a room? Could those people they thought they knew so well be hiding dark secrets about their past? Or did their dead sister have more to hide than anyone involved?
With pressures mounting and suspicions looming, love will lose to ambition, greed will trump responsibility and deception would be common. Will the duo succeed in muddling through the convoluted clues on time, or will their first wrong step be their last?
Find out in the pulse-pounding suspense thriller …

Disclaimer:A Huge Thanks to Bloomsbury India for providing me with a review copy. My thought, opinions and feelings expressed in this review are, however my own!

I grew up with Nancy Drews, Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie mysteries – and to be honest, they have set a bar quite high when it comes to thrillers, but especially “who dunnit” mysteries. But recently, my bars have gone towards, the more dark, twisted, the better enjoyment I have in reading them (let’s not go towards my mental state; it’s a dark path that you shouldn’t even think about!).

Now this book; Murder In A Minute had me hooked from the moment I read the blurb; and I while I couldn’t enjoy it uninterrupted (Thank You, Family Time!), but I get my chance to read it on the way back home from my holidays, an hour into the flight!

Coming to my reading preferences, I still read mysteries, but I rarely get the same thrill I used to, because in most books I tend to pick off the killer within a few chapters, and hence, I do not enjoy the book as much as I should, exceptions as always!

This book, now starts off with a woman’s thoughts on her life and her circumstances without even knowing, or believing that she’s about to be murdered! This woman was Esha, the adopted daughter of an industrialist, the young CEO of her father’s company and a famous one at that! But her murder opens a big can of worms, in her industrialist family, which like any other family, have their own secrets!

13 pages in, and I had strong suspicions about the killer; but the REAL TALENT of the author lay in the fact that despite my STRONG BELIEF about the killer’s identity and motives; the author had me DOUBT MY CONVICTIONS and MY EXPERIENCE in the criminal investigative field that had my grudging and utmost respect.

This “who dunnit” mystery was brilliantly, fantastically written and it had the joy of having me hooked right in as a reader from the start – a cozy read for the long winter nights ahead accompanied with a cup of hot chocolate/coffee/tea, which I so sincerely wish was how I had my experience of this book!

P.S. The author gives a very freaking humongous clue about the next book, and I NEED IT NOW!