Book Review – “Don’t tell the Governor” by Ravi Subramanian

Ravi Subramanian is an Indian author. A banker by profession, Subramanian has written popular thrillers about banking and bankers, including award-winning trilogy The Incredible Banker, The Bankster and Bankrupt. An alumnus of IIM Bangalore, Subramanian spent close to two decades in the financial services industry.

Since the time I read his first book “If God was a banker”, I have read almost all his books. I liked the way he has chosen the Financial Industry that he is working on and written nice thrillers surrounding various Banking topics. Recently I read another book written by him – “Don’t tell the Governor”.

Ravi has written this fictional story using the real financial events, scandal, and scams that happened recently in India. As the name suggests the central character of the book is the RBI Governor (hinted with Raghuram Rajan) and this fictional story is developed surrounding the situation that he has faced while all these events where getting unfolded in front of his eyes and how his suggestions where not given much value during the difficult times that Indian economy was facing.

This time Ravi was not able to bring the real suspense element that his earlier books were carrying. He was not able to strike a balance between narrating the fictional story and mixing it with the real events that took place in India and impacted Indian economy overall. The book is very easy to read and fast paced. This book being is a combination of fiction woven with non-fiction, Ravi could not do justice with either of it and missing the spice of suspense.

If you want to know about the events that happened in recent past in India and want to know about their impact it had in the Indian financial Industry; this book gives you a good way to know about it through this fictional story. The book hinted about various events like – Induction of new Governor Raghuram Rajan, Demonetization, LOU issuance case with Punjab National Bank, Vijay Mallya, Mehul Modi & Nirav Modi case, IPL match fixing and involvement of celebrities, Hijack of Kandhar flight and demand of release of terrorist against the lives of 124 Indians.

Overall the book is a good read, fast paced and has a thrill element in it but misses the element of suspense which has been the central theme of all his earlier books. The flow of the events in the book is very predictable. I would surely recommend this book to the readers but this is not one of the great works by Ravi Subramanian.