In his debut novel, ex-Digit reviewer Nikhil Pradhan tries to deliver a chilling thriller through a bold new attempt at storytelling. Does he succeed? Read our review to find out the truth about the Cold Truth.
When was the last time you saw someone go beyond the tried-and-tested techniques and methods and do something wonderfully refreshing, unique and bold? Whether it is Christopher Nolan taking cinema goers through a challenging non-linear journey of loss and revenge in Memento or Giovanni Giorgio Moroder using a synthesizer to make music in the 60s that would eventually become disco — we sit up and take notice of how these mavericks dared to do different.
What does this have to do with books? Well, in the world of novelia, the crime/thriller/mystery genre is as old as they come. Probably has been around for as long as crime existed. Within a genre of such rich history and shaped by authors who have become household names, it is a joy to see someone taking a chance and attempting an audacious departure from conventions to tell you a story that keeps your attention hostage. Nikhil Pradhan tries to do just that, with his debut novel, Cold Truth.
Start Small, Aim Big
Touching 200 pages, Cold Truth is an edge-of-the-seat fiction thriller that begins when a sharp and resolute investigative journalist, Gloria Lama, pokes her nose into what the majority of the world thinks is an unfortunate but typical missing person case in Mayur Vihar, a locality in East Delhi.
With help from a wide variety of allies ranging from a disgruntled inspector to a washed-out Indian intelligence operative, Gloria proactively peels the incident, layer by layer, to reveal something far more sinister and horrifying. On a lighter note, I’m now convinced that many a menacing and terrifying event in the world probably have their roots in East Delhi.
The USP
Pradhan’s biggest gamble is not just an ambitious plot that begins in East Delhi and ends in the vast freezing wastelands of Antarctica. It’s the way he has told his story. Having more in common with a detective’s case file than your typical structured narrative, readers discover the Cold Truth through a collection of WhatsApp conversations, voice message transcripts, encrypted email exchanges & chats (decrypted for your reading, of course), journal entries and many more.
Pradhan uses a series of WhatsApp conversations, voice message transcripts, encrypted chats and the like to take readers closer to discovering the Cold Truth
Pradhan provides a fresh, modern & digitally tuned perspective where the reader feels like he/she is solving the jigsaw puzzle, rather than having the solution presented to them. And it works. I could easily immerse myself in the story and see Gloria Lama sitting in her study, feverishly punching away at her Whatsapp keypad and chatting with her associates. The process becomes more participatory.
Difficult to put down
With a larger-than-life plot that jumps continents and bridges the past with the present, pace is extremely important. You move too slow, reader attention meanders away. If you move too fast, you run the risk of overwhelming and confusing your reader. I can attest to Cold Truth’s balanced pace because I could not put the book down once I started and I finished it in one sprint.
Primarily written from the PoV of Lama, the book comfortably accommodates her associates and other players in the story, as they piece together evidence to discover what really happened to 10-year old Sakshi Prakash. You can even find Pradhan inserting himself as an important character in the story — a cheeky nod to the quirky trope of “going meta”.
Stumbling Blocks
Although Lama’s gender isn’t played up much in the plot, it was refreshing to see a strong woman protagonist in the lead, giving orders & not just taking them. She is not relegated to the sidelines and actively pushes the plot forward. However, in an attempt to cement the superior cognitive credentials of Lama, the novel fares poorly in fleshing out the rest of the cast, like the seasoned intelligence operative Abhay Chowdhary. I expected a man with years of experience in the intelligence community under his belt, to be sharper than how he has been portrayed in the story and found it slightly incredulous that he always ended up being the one surprised by new information.
Although the Cold Truth keeps your attention hooked as it jumps continents and decades, the brevity that the story uses to sustain the pace tend to become its enemy. In the interest of keeping it crisp and functional, Pradhan misses out on opportunities to flesh character motivations out more and integrate them tighter into the actions that they take. There could have been more anchors in their psyche, which could have made them more identifiable to readers.
Where it exceeds expectations in structure, the Cold Truth unfortunately stumbles in the writing department. No memorable passage or quote or quip immediately comes to my mind. The writing also doesn’t help the characters stand out and have a life in the minds of the readers, long after they put the book down.
The social setting of the story isn’t explored much in detail either, so we have to assume that it is set in a world with moral codes, institutions and power structures — similar to what we have in the real world. I also found it surprising that the book has more Latin references than vernacular ones. In a plot so gripping and terrifying, characters swearing in their mother tongue during moments of despair and frustration might have probably made them more relatable to me.
However, one point has to be made — Cold Truth does a good job in using the right comprehensible language to talk about the science on which a decent chunk of the plot revolves around. Pradhan is no stranger to science & technology (as is evident from his time as a reviewer at Digit – you can read his Digit stories here) and he is also no stranger to communicating it effectively and effortlessly.
A specific point on the tech used — The story starts off in May 2016. Although WhatsApp rolled out end-to-end encryption worldwide a month before that, their privacy policy suggests that they share user metadata with parent company Facebook for commercial purposes. Given that the plot implicates very powerful bodies which undoubtedly have the power to digitally snoop on the protagonists, it seems to be a strange choice for our meticulous and digitally savvy heroes to use Whatsapp for communicating sensitive information. A chat platform based on Onion services might have been a better option. But, that being said, expect to see a couple of references to some of our favorite secure communication platforms like ProtonMail and CryptoCat.
Cold Truth is the kind of novel that feels like it’s made for the big screen and a larger entertainment experience. Where the author didn’t spare any expense to make the plot as big and riveting as possible, the publisher ideally should have supplemented the book with an online narrative, replete with engaging footage, photographs and files mentioned by Pradhan in the footnotes. Who wouldn’t love to be a part of the story that jumps out of the book and into your life, blurring the lines between what’s real and what isn’t? To that effect, I firmly believe that Cold Truth missed out on an opportunity to reframe how we engage with stories in the digital age.
Should you get the Cold Truth?
For the gripping storyline and a brave audacious attempt at a different type of storytelling by Pradhan in his debut work, this book deserves a read. Whether you want to add some entertainment to your 2-hr long transit or you have an itch for larger-than-life mysteries with a healthy dose of science thrown into the mix, make sure to grab your paperback copy of the Cold Truth on Amazon for under 200 bucks (At the time of writing this review, the book costs ₹156).
With Lovecraftian undertones, Cold Truth begins without taking too much space — a missing 10-year old girl in Mayur Vihar, who might even fit the description of a little girl in your life — and will then take you through a fast-paced globe-trotting adventure into the sinister and the macabre. Discover the Cold Truth yourself. Happy Reading!
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