Money, vanity and thrill have always swayed the human mind. We have an innate tendency to acquire and retain, perhaps we never gave up the “hunter and gatherer” mentality. In this context financial thrillers become a curious read naturally.
This time we have with us Atul Koul Randev, author of The Hundred Million Bet, the bestselling financial thriller of the year 2023 so far. The novel talks about money laundering, mafia and crime.
After winning a hundred million euros in a poker game, Caesar, the protagonist of the story, is ready to retire, but the destiny doesn’t seem to be that smooth. The mafia boss whom he has beaten in the game would not let Caesar have an easy walkout.
With dramatic scenes, well-placed dialogues, suspense in the narration, the book becomes a single-breath read.
So, let’s ask Randev a few questions about this wholesome reading treat that he has given to us:
How much do you think that financial thrillers as a genre are underexplored?
I don’t really see many financial thrillers going around. Surprising but true, isn’t it. I’m not quite sure why that is the case though. There are so many interesting nuances to finance – trading, money laundering, terrorist financing. Money is arguably the focal point around which a lot of our lives revolve and is a trigger for a lot of lying, cheating, and stealing. I have seen some good multimedia series in this genre, e.g., Billions, or Scam 1992, but there is definitely room for more books.
The book is packed with dramatic scenes; how do you make imaginations trickle down to words?
Thank you. I’m glad you think so.
My method is to pour out everything I have in mind on paper. Literally pouring out thousands of words about the setting, the characters, what they are feeling, and what they are doing. Sometimes it is hard to get the flow going, and I have to force myself to just start writing (or typing) until the rhythm strikes. If I spend long enough at the keyboard, eventually the thoughts start flowing and start coming together cohesively.
Once I have everything that I have to say down on paper, then I have the luxury of cutting out the parts to tighten it all down to what I need to move the story forward. To give you an example, we (mostly my editor, Stuti) cut out about 90 per cent of the words that I wrote about the settings. I needed them to begin with to get the right triggers for the characters, but once we had the action and the narrative in place, we felt that we could remove a lot of the stage setting and strip it down to the bare minimum.
Do you think that the easy way to success is often the most risky way to success?
This is a difficult one to answer.
To be honest, in my humble opinion, success might look different to different people, so we should narrow the scope here a bit to financial success.
I’m not sure about easy, though I do believe in the risk-reward equation. I’m sure you’ve heard a thousand times that investments with a high reward potential often also come along with high risks. So yes, if your definition of success is e.g., making a lot of money, and you want to bet on a lottery for it, it might be the easiest way to get super rich, but the risk of losing your investment would remain high.
The characters in the plot have been well-crafted; what do you think is the ‘magic ingredient’ here?
My humble ambition was to make them real and relatable characters even though they are set in a story that most people would find quite alien. As in, most people who read the book have not spent a lot of weekends playing million-euro poker games in Milan, and yet I wanted them to recognize themselves or their friends with the characters, and be able to imagine that if they or a friend did end up at a million euro poker game in Milan – they would likely react in a similar way. These were relatively simple people, with recognizable strengths and flaws, confidence and insecurities, and adding those nuances to the characters helped quite a bit.
How did you balance complex scenes with simple words?
I wish I had a complex or more informed answer for this.
The truth is that we got there with a lot of editing. Stuti, chief editor at Srishti Publishers, can vouch for this. I feel that I learned more about writing in a few rounds of editing this one than I have learned in years of actually writing.
I suffer from a tendency to digress while writing the story, focusing almost too much on what’s going on around the characters while the story is happening. Stuti made me rewrite a whole lot of plot that was meandering, and I think the end result was a much tighter read.
One thing that I’ve realized is that it is easier to cut down the excessive narrative and keep the parts that clearly add to the story, as opposed to forcefully adding more elements to the story to improve the flow.
Redemption appears to be a theme in this novel. How far do people get redeemed and have second chances in their real lives?
Haha! another hard one. To be honest, I’m not a scholar on life and can only offer my uninformed opinion and not the studied facts.
I’d like to believe that most people have the opportunity to correct bad things in their lives as long as they approach it logically, and consistently. A lot of people fix bad jobs or bad relationships with bad bosses by working to get better jobs. People work through difficulties in relationships with partners and go on to have successful marriages, or people find love again after having lost it at some point. People get sick and they get better. Wouldn’t you say that redemption is all around us? We just need to work for it a little.
Though I have to admit, sometimes life does not give you an opportunity to bounce back from something, for no fault of your own. But then again, maybe there is redemption to be had in other ways. I didn’t get into IIT in two attempts, and I thought my life was over at the time, I think I managed to bounce back.
Finally, do you see loyalty and betrayal existing side by side?
In my view the key parameters, here, are around honesty and consistency. If you are consistently honest, then you do what you promise, or conversely, clearly communicate that you do not agree to do something and then, you know, don’t do it. A betrayal would be promising something and then doing something else, i.e., not being honest while making the promise. I’m not really sure, I’m winging it here.
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