There are some gems nesting within the pages of well-known journalist Gauri Sinh’s book.
Sample these.
“Instant celebrity without necessary toil allows us to believe ourselves invincible.”
or
“Mistakes were costly and inconvenient to everybody-on ramp, in life.”
The back page of her whodunit book, “The Miss India Murders” screams with the tagline- Twenty perfect contestants. One perfect murder.
Gauri has been an insider to the world of glamour and entertainment for a considerable period and that makes her book both credible and arresting.
The story is set in the year 1995 where there are twenty-one beautiful contestants participating in the pageant. It opens with a shocking mysterious death on the ramp, and the plot subsequently unravels how the case is solved. In a nail-biting twist of circumstances, with a closed circle of suspects where each suspect is found to have a credible motive behind committing the crime.
The book was launched at Crossword Bookstores, Kemps Corner by super model Ujjwala Raut and Parizad Kolah Marshall.
This is Gauri’s third book, after Dog-Send: The Story of Simba and The Garud Prophecies- Sitara’s Story.
Welcoming senior scribe Gauri Sinh to Crossword Bookstores, Maulik Desai, Head said, “ The genre of mystery novels is a young form of literature that has developed since the early-19th century. We see a demand for fast reads among the youth and welcome such gripping plots.”
The book courses though troughs and crests, to an edge-of-the-seat finish, while giving the reader a sense of the enticing elite world of fashion and beauty pageants.
At the launch of her book Gauri Sinh said “when people ask me why a crime novel, I would like to ask them why not. All of them read crime novels. I have been reading crime novels. I find the iconic characters in crime novels are usually a male, they are older. Even when you think of women, you do not have an iconic, glam, young, contemporary detective. I wanted to try and fill that void for desi audiences. I wanted to make the characters Indian. There is a trend that runs through all my writing. I like to take ordinary characters and place them in extraordinary settings.”
Ujjwala Raut, the famous supermodel who is well aware about how the glamour industry works, said “I have known Gauri since the last 21 years. She has been interviewing me since the time I was into modelling. I love mysteries and detective books & I used to read a lot of Sidney Sheldon books which are about murders and mysteries. My dad was a cop himself. He retired as an ACP in Mumbai.”
Parizad Kolah Marshall added, ” I have known Gauri ever since she was the editor of Bombay Times. I have been for all her book launches. This is her third one. I can relate to the glamour world back then and can also relate to the time when we were a one big family and how things have changed in the current times. “
The book is published by Harper Collins.
About the book
Twenty perfect contestants. One perfect murder.
It’s 1995. The finale of the Miss India pageant, hosted by the mega-media conglomerate, Eye India, is only days away. In the running are twenty-one beautiful contestants, including India’s sweetheart and reigning model, Akruti Rai.
The final dress rehearsal ends on a nightmarish note as the sensuous and ambitious ‘Lajjo’ is murdered right on the ramp. Soon, Akruti and her fellow contestants become prime suspects in a case that gets increasingly macabre as bodies pile up – the gossipy, affable pageant hairdresser Doreen, the self-assured mean-girl Nuzhat …
Amidst massive public outcry and searing press coverage, Akruti is convinced by an enigmatic fellow contestant, Parvati Samant, to help her investigate the murders. But who, really, is Parvati? And can Akruti help unearth the sinister truth, clear her own name, and also keep an eye on the prize?
