The Newsroom Mafia is the second Indian novel that I read in recent times with the term newsroom in the title. The first one, also a debut novel written by a professional journalist centering on her life in newsroom, was a very readable novel. But the associations that come with the term newsroom is much more serious and demanding because the effect of media in the activities, decisions and opinions that we make in our life is large. Thus when someone attempts to tell a story about newspapers or media in general, the expectations become humungous, which was not met in the novel that I read before. For that reason I had an apprehension while taking The Newsroom Mafia by veteran journalist Oswald Pereira for reading.

But the novel delivers and how! The Newsroom Mafia, as the name indicates is a story based on the intrusion of crime into fourth estate. What strikes the reader hard is the fact that news can be manipulated for devious ends. The story set in eighties is chilling real. The characters are multi layered and drawn from life. The motives, the master plans, the encounters every thing is life like. Oswald Pereira has used his three decades of experience masterfully in crafting this page turner.

Super-cop Donald Fernandez is hell bent on demolishing the criminal enterprise of Don Narayan Swamy, an underworld king who is as popular among corrupt politicians and bureaucracy as with common people. It is not an easy task when the whole world is loyal to the Don. Aiding Donald in his venture is the aspiring investigative journalist Oscar Pinto of The Newsroom, an orthodox English newspaper. The story is told in a first person account by Oscar. Every available ammunition is tried by both sides to get an upper hand in the game. Much of the war is fought through media when both sides try to manipulate the news to turn the opinion n favor or against the party they prefer. Journalists are bought, news stories are created, planted and manipulated every day for this end.

A good crime novel written in Indian English is a non existent genre (if you try to match with British and American standard of novels). But The Newsroom Mafia comes close to it. Very close I should say. If there are any cons, like certain really unwanted subplots and structural inconsistencies in some parts, it has to be excused as the first attempt of an otherwise gifted writer. So I will recommend everyone who likes their reads with a certain amount of violence and suspense to read The Newsroom mafia. But only hitch is that from the next day you will read every news story twice, to cross check if you have missed anything.