The death of a scientist on the doorstep of a woman politician in New Delhi, and his last words about a death threat to the Indian Prime Minister – these are the bare bones of a plot for a crime thriller penned by New Delhi BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi to be out on July 8.
The New Delhi Conspiracy , published by Harper Collins is Ms. Lekhi’s first foray into fiction writing and she has co-written the book with Krishna Kumar who works with her. Speaking to The Hindu about the book, Ms. Lekhi said that the plot of the story had been with her for a while but that it took a year and a half to finish the novel.
“Usually my reading or even writing is restricted to blogs on political issues or legal briefs (Ms. Lekhi is a lawyer by profession), so writing fiction was new and very liberating,” she said, adding that the book was full of car chases, and scenes set in far-off Hong Kong to Lutyen’s Delhi.
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“It’s a work of fiction although I know that since the protagonist is a woman politician, people will try to draw inferences to real life. It is a purely fictional distillation of living in Delhi,” she said. “It is intriguing, topical and revealing,” she added, also aware that readers may try to hunt for real-life people from whom the characters may be drawn from.
Asked whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi had been in the know of the project, Ms. Lekhi replied in the negative, although, she “hoped that he would buy a copy.”
The blurb of the book says that the plot revolves around a conspiracy to kill the Prime Minister — named Raghav Mohan — in this case, and will see media and tech smarts brought in to solve the mystery, along with the woman politician protagonist, Vedika Khanna.
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The formal launch of the book will be held after the Parliament session ends on July 26.