When your jacket blurbs boast both spy thriller commercial authors and epic literary fiction writers, you know you most likely have a broad-based super hit on your hands. Like THE GODFATHER, THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES and “Succession,” Deepti Kapoor’s latest novel is so replete with gangster havoc, characters held as pawns with dire consequences, and social commentary completely infused into the story that it will embed itself into your brain but never overstay its welcome. There will be plenty of reverberations when you’ve set the book down, and you most likely will go back to it time and again.

"The thriller aspect of the novel is compelling, the love story is generous and seductive, and the wild parties and high living mixing with the violent means with which to gain power are so dashingly detailed that no reader will be able to resist the opportunity to turn pages as fast as possible."

Already picked up as an FX miniseries, AGE OF VICE revolves around two Indias --- the oppressed and the oppressors. It skips back and forth from one fateful night to its aftermath and the past histories of those affected by it. Kapoor spent years putting the pains of everyday life in New Delhi to the page as a journalist, and her terse and effectively direct language makes it an easy book to get lost in. Like Hemingway, her style is cinematic, offering a play-by-play of the action while also giving us a pointed experience with the characters’ interior monologues. Kapoor shows us what is happening outside on the streets and inside the minds of three people for whom one car accident brings nothing but difficulty.

The novel opens in New Delhi at 3am. A Mercedes is speeding down a main city thoroughfare and hops the curb, taking five lives with it. The vehicle belongs to a rich man who is not at the scene. A shell-shocked servant survives, incapable of explaining the winding events that led to the fatal crash. Why is he there? Who were the others? What comes to him and the family he works for are different but equally disturbing ramifications.

The Wadias are the family in question, and their lifestyle is built on oppression, lies, corruption and the worst of the pleasure principle. Ajay, the servant, was born into poverty but works hard and rises in the ranks of the family enterprise. Sunny is the heir to the fortune. He is a player, a hedonistic man who dreams of becoming far more violent, flamboyant and wealthy than even his father was. To complete the triangle, there is Neda, the well-intentioned journalist who gets too close to the family and finds herself pushed into a corner filled with despicable actions and the need to set their story straight. When desire enters the picture, no one will get out of the power struggle unscathed.

Set against the ever-changing dynamics of the elitist factions of this highly divided country and the realities of the poison of gang warfare, indecent proposals and unions built on everything but love, AGE OF VICE has something for everyone. Like a great Bollywood spectacle, the story deftly handles the varying degrees of emotional backdrops and the fights within and outside the family in a most entertaining way.

The thriller aspect of the novel is compelling, the love story is generous and seductive, and the wild parties and high living mixing with the violent means with which to gain power are so dashingly detailed that no reader will be able to resist the opportunity to turn pages as fast as possible. AGE OF VICE is a fun and engaging family saga that will continue to fly off shelves.