'I was born on a bloody road. The blood was my mother's. My sisters couldn't find a midwife in time. There was no way my mother could get relief from the upper-caste well, and so they tell me, that my sisters ran to some puddles to fill their little mouths up and then ran back to where my mother was almost dying of pain and then spat out some water on her face and the rest down below on mine. That is how I came into this world.'

Someone is disposing of politicians one by one. And the murderer has borrowed from the genius of Agatha Christie.

When a local Mumbai politician is found wrapped in a plastic bag behind a park bench, the dashing and capable DIG Ajay Biswas is told to take over the case. Ajay arrives in Mumbai along with his wife Aparajita and soon discovers he is being misled by his Mumbai compatriots who are determined to save their own skin. Someone is deliberately providing false leads; his presence is not wanted.

While in Mumbai, Ajay and Aparajita meet up with their old college friend Akhil Sukumar. Akhil and Aparajita have had a tortuous history, and it appears that the one-time lovers now want nothing more than to let bygones be bygones. Easier said.

From the barren lands of rural India to the immaculate lawns of Cambridge, The Rat Eater is a book whose uninhibitedness may offend purists as it lays bare a few uncomfortable truths about India-a country entangled in a web of caste, corruption and cover-ups. The privileged flourish at the cost of the oppressed. The price has to be paid, and someone has decided that it needs to be paid in blood.