Surely, there must be men like Professor Moriarty in corporate India. They may not be such intellectual colossi or consummate masters, but they would share some key traits with him – wile, ingenuity, drive and utter ruthlessness. And they would understand the psychology of temptation. What kind of schemes would such men device? That is the question I seek to answer through my novels. Apart from bringing in thousands of crores of rupees (hundreds of millions of dollars), these schemes would have to satisfy the fabled professor’s taste for elegant, thought-through designs; designs that ride on the motivations and vulnerabilities of intelligent but weak men. My antagonists may not have Moriarty’s guile or panache, and my detectives may be intellectual pygmies before Holmes. Nevertheless, I am taking a shot (four shots, actually) at crafting credible stories of intelligent crimes in corporate India. I plan to write four novels, each set in a different industry. Fraudster was the first novel, which was set in the banking world. Insider, set in the Indian stock market, is the second. Two more are scheduled for 2017 and 2018. Meanwhile, I am also experimenting with short stories (crime) set in contemporary India.
