Novel cashes in on debutant author’s skillful writing style

IT IS no surprise that How To Kidnap The Rich has been optioned by HBO because it has that fast-paced originality of a gripping TV drama series or entertaining movie.

The dynamic debut novel from Rahul Raina is an interesting story of an intelligent young man concocting a get-rich-quick scheme. He takes an exam for a lazy, wealthy and intolerable teenager, and accidentally scores the highest marks in India, which suddenly propels the undeserving candidate to stardom.

What follows is a complicated web, which has investigators, the media, blackmail, kidnap and unlikely individuals becoming the centre of attention.

The accomplished novel may be set in India, but it is very much aimed at the global market and has a free-flowing style that draws the reader in from the start. It is that freshness in the writing that makes this a pageturner. The book has subtle shades of other stories, like the 2010 novel Serious Men, which revolves around a father who plans to pass his young son off as a mathematical genius, but this has more threads in the story and a young protagonist who is unpredictable. It is these extra elements that make this enticing from the opening page.

Raina skilfully manages to weave together satire, crime, human emotion and observations of important social issues with his engaging writing style.

On one hand it is light-hearted but also has a distinctly dark side as it explores the very real underbelly of society that exists in India. The end result is a highly accomplished debut from a new literary star you will be hearing a lot more about. And if this does get made into a film or TV drama, then it will definitely be worth watching.