God Is A Gamer by Ravi Subramanian is a crime story plotted in an international arena involving political leaders of the United States and India; investigation agencies of both the countries and some high level banking professionals. There are many interesting characters in the story. Their journey starts in isolation in the beginning chapters of the story but later all the links between them come into light gradually. Story starts with an international bank NYIB (New York International Bank) with its operations in India. Three friends - Aditya, Swami and Sundeep. Aditya and Sundeep move out of the bank and start their own organization eTIOS to handle banking operations as an outsourced agency. NYIB is the first bank to outsource them for their operations. Aditya and Sundeep are also engaged in running their gaming industry launching online games from time to time.
Swami was aspiring to become overall operations head in a short time until he gets a big jerk in his career, when Malvika (his boss) sends a confidential negative report about his performance to the Asia Pacific Headquarter of the bank. This all resulted from a heist that takes place in the country and customers lose money in fake money withdrawals through ATMs from their account. Then there are murders, more heists on a larger scale, involvement of many international names in scandals, murders, heists etc.
My View:
I became a die hard fan of Ravi Subramanian when I first read his book The Bankster (reviewed here) in November 2012. This is fifth fiction novel from Ravi and all of his stories revolve around crime related to banking in one way or the other. Having a large amount of his career spent in various portfolios in banking, he is probably aware of in and out of banking business. He also has a non fiction to his credit. Overall story is quite interesting and keep you hooked to the plot throughout 300+ pages. The virtual money floating over the internet in large amounts is an interesting bit in the story.
Somewhere in the story, Varun visits Tanya's residence and is stopped abruptly when he is taking a bottle of wasabi nuts from one of the shelves in the kitchen to taste some nuts. Varun likes Wasabi Nuts and hence could not stop himself for this action. Tanya immediately stops him with a reason that the bottle has crossed its expiry date and hence let him not take nuts from this bottle. She brings another bottle for him. This is something that Ravi would have kept as a point to be talked about at the end when the suspense is being disclosed, but probably forgot it or skipped it.
You will feel it a quick read and running the book faster as each chapter is not more than 2-3 pages. Otherwise also story has been kept crisp and moving at a right pace to keep you engaged throughout. The story is about good and bad, crime and investigation, law and violations. Bigger the crime, more is the research and analysis required to reach to the crux of crime and criminals. Ravi might have plans to come out with a sequel to tackle Varun later. As far as title is concerned, more than God, it is the human mind that is behind all crime related plannings and executions. The crime becomes so big that law is forced to crack it but still a criminal with a different bend of mind is still able to play with the law and give a twist to the final outcome.
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