How to Kidnap The Rich is a coming-of-age crime fiction by Rahul Raina.

Ramesh Kumar is a son of a tea-seller in Old Delhi, struggling with perpetual poverty and his alcoholic father’s rage. When his father gets involved in a scuffle and starts receiving threats, they move to New Delhi. One day a French nun, named Claire, visits their tea stall and takes Ramesh under her wings. She starts teaching him and preparing him for All Indias, a national-level examination. When Claire is diagnosed with cancer and needs surgery costing a lot of money, Ramesh is presented with an opportunity that changes his life: The surgeon agrees to perform the surgery free of cost, if Ramesh agrees to take the All Indias examination for his son. And thus begins Ramesh’s career as an “Educational Consultant”, which basically meant carrying out examination fraud for the sons of the riches.

While doing so, Ramesh meets his client Rudi Saxena. He takes Rudi’s exam and to his surprise, tops it. Rudi becomes an overnight star and Ramesh sees an opportunity to blackmail Rudi’s family and milk money for the rest of his life. Little does he know, this association will drag him into the world of troubles. Ramesh and Rudi find themselves in the maze of crime and deceit, while both of them are forced to examine their bonds, with each other as well as the people around them.

How did it make me feel?

Kudos to the author on the title, How To Kidnap The Rich. I mean how can you not pick up the book with a title like that? But sadly, that’s just about it. It does not match the story.

The setting where the story starts is perfect. A good amount of mystery, a flashback with parallel, present storytelling. The premise and the foundation were good, but when the actual story started I immediately noticed the contradicting personalities of the characters. The character traits of Rudy and Ramesh seemed to fluctuate constantly. Due to this, their interactions seemed odd in many places throughout the story. I could not visualize those conversations at all. They came out as unrealistic.

I appreciated the humor and the sarcasm by the author on the idiosyncrasies of the Indian societies and human behavior as a whole. But the humor as well as few other pieces of the storytelling were repetitive and thus, lost their value.

The climax reminded me of a Bollywood movie that I’d seen years ago. That was a bummer too. Overall, this story is a lot of chaos with some good satire and humor but not enough to save it. Sadly, as much intrigued as I was with the title, How To Kidnap The Rich didn’t work for me.

How To Kidnap The Rich is set to release on June 21, 2021 and is available on Amazon. If you use my link to buy, I may get a small commission at NO additional cost to you! It will help me keep my blog running! 🙂 Thank you for your support!