Nikhil Pradhan’s second novel,
Yesterday’s Ghosts, is a pacy thriller about four former intelligence operatives and the circumstances that bring them back together after decades of no-contact. It mixes espionage with horror in a pared-down, sparse narrative. The interrogation format is used as the primary narrative device, interspersed with short spells of omniscient narration to ground the novel better.
Pradhan’s first book,
Cold Truth, had a similar structure and his experimentation with the novel form stood out for diverting from conventional storytelling. Unfortunately, the experimental audacity of the first book becomes the second’s comfort zone.
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