SACRED GAMES a literary novel that is also a crime novel, a detective story, and a thriller. Sartaj Singh, a seasoned and cynical Bombay police officer, is summoned by an anonymous tip one morning, by a voice which promises him an opportunity to capture the famed and very powerful Ganesh Gaitonde. Gaitonde is the boss of the G-company, a large and powerful criminal organization. Sartaj Singh finds Gaitonde, but by the time he breaks into Gaitonde’s safe house, the mafia don is dead by his own hand. As Singh investigates Gaitonde’s death and life, he becomes aware of an immense danger that threatens him and the city he lives in, and the book turns into a slow-burning thriller. Simultaneously, an alternative narrative flashes back and depicts Ganesh Gaitonde’s rise in the underworld, his ruthlessness and his sentimentality, his cunning and his grandiose sense of self. The intertwining narratives of the book trace the journeys of these two men, the policeman and the gangster, as they move toward the secrets that threaten and haunt them, and toward self-knowledge.
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