BOOK REVIEW OF ‘THE POACHER’ WRITTEN BY NEILAY KHASNABISH

Book Title: The Poacher

Author: Neilay Khasnabish

Total Number of Pages: 203

Publisher: IndiLitt

Publication Date: 15 May 2018

Format: Kindle eBook

Language: English

Genre: Fiction / Mystery / Wildlife

REVIEWED BY SOHINEE DEY

‘The Poacher’ mingles mystery with wildlife to leave away a social message through the mystery plot. This fiction book is set in one of the major national parks in India, The Kaziranga National Park. The UNESCO world Heritage site is popular for the one horned rhinoceros and poaching of these animals is predominantly practiced.

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Read my previous review of A Court of Frost and Starlight

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Born and brought up in Assam, Kaziranga has always been a vacation spot in my early childhood. Apart from the one horned rhino, Kaziranga features a spectacular display of flora and fauna. With its dense forests and green meadows, Kaziranga offers a home for not only the rhinos but also several other animals.

The main protagonist of this book is a police officer, George Hazarika who has been suspended from his duty due to some conspiracy of the higher officials. He uses this time of his suspension to travel to Kaziranga. There he comes across a news of the murder of Dr. Hemant Saikia who was the editor of ‘The Kaziranga’. While in Kaziranga, he disguised himself as a photographer and didn’t reveal his true identity of being a police officer.

Saikia’s death has been put under the rug and the officer in charge had denied to further investigate on the matter. This brought Hazarika to the conclusion that his murder must be related to poaching in some way because Saikia never shied away from talking about it in his newspaper. This is where the murder mystery plot comes. On his quest of finding out the murder(s), the narration travels through Kaziranga describing it’s beauty and also highlights on poaching.

Most part of the book is about the wildlife of Kaziranga and the rest is about the murder. So, it can be said that the murder mystery plot was just a medium to showcase the wildlife of Kaziranga and also talk about the poaching issue.

The writing style of the author was good but the narration at some places, lacked the consistent flow. Neilay Khasnabish has given beautiful description of the wildlife and Kaziranga as a whole. I was able to picturize the scenes. That was a really good thing about his writing style. The dialogues were good but they would have been even better if the characters were more expressive while delivering their dialogues. There were a few grammatical errors but they can be easily fixed with a round of editing.

FINAL THOUGHTS

‘The Poacher’ is more like a book on wildlife so, it doesn’t have a very strong murder mystery plot. I liked it. Coming across the familiar places mentioned in the book was nostalgic to me.

If you do like reading books on wildlife and nature, you can definitely give this book a read. The wildlife sub-genre is rarely experimented with in fiction. So, if I think of this book in that way, the storyline definitely has something new to offer.

POESY IN CHRYSALIS RATING : ⭐⭐⭐ / ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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