Book review: 'Daylight Robbery'

Daylight Robbery
Surender Mohan Pathak 
Translated from Hindi by Sudarshan Purohit 
Blaft
242 pages
Rs195 

Surender Mohan Pathak's Daylight Robbery is a breezy read where the twists just keep coming. This crime thriller was originally written in Hindi back in 1980 as Din Dahade Dakaiti. It is Pathak's second book to be translated into English by Sudarshan Purohit, after The 65 Lakh Heist (originally published as Paisanth Lakh ki Dakaiti).

Pathak, for those who logged in late, is the big daddy of Hindi crime fiction. This book is the fifth in the series of 38 odd novels that he wrote around the character called Vimal Kumar Khanna. Vimal is a good-hearted criminal. He is a master of disguise and is on the run. He also goes under the names of Sardar Surender Singh Sohal, Girish Mathur, Banwarilal Tongawala, Ramesh Kumar Sharma, Kailash Malhotra and Basant Kumar.    

In this particular story, Vimal agrees to carry out a daring robbery of a company van which is carrying Rs45 lakh — the salary to be paid to its employees. Vimal, along with his three accomplices Dwarkanath, Gangadhar and Kooka, manage to carry out the robbery. But soon after, things start to go wrong. Gangadhar gets hit by a bullet and is dying. Dwarkanath has a heart attack. Kooka first gets mugged by thieves and is then killed by Dwarkanath. All this leaves Vimal to sort out the mess. How he does that forms the remaining part of the story.

Pathak packs in as much masala as he can in the 200-odd pages, from sex to gambling to even the (then) latest gizmos like the video recorder. Daylight Robbery is a nice read for people who have enjoyed reading James Hadley Chase and Robert Ludlum. In fact, Pathak started his career by translating Chase into Hindi. This he did alongside the day job he held at Indian Telephone Industries. The good news is that more books of Pathak are being translated into English. Next in line is Fortune's Ransom, which is expected later this year.