Book Review: The Dirty Dozen: Hitmen of the Mumbai Underworld by Gabriel Khan

I was skeptical about Gabriel Khan's second book considering the first one from the author was the highly dubious Mumbai Avengers (converted into a far more dubious movie later - Phantom). However, Zaidi remains my weakness and having read the preface which alluded to Khan's work with Zaidi, I bought the full book hoping some of Zaidi's skill would have rubbed off on "Khan" ("Khan" is apparently a pseudonym).

I needn't have worried. 'The Dirty Dozen' is a pacy thriller about the lives of the henchmen we don't often read about or remember. Khan's narrative style is similar to Zaidi's - often written in a fly-on-the-wall style. In many ways, this book tied up a lot of loose narrative ends for me in my head across all of Zaidi's works and also helped me understand where the fact for the fiction on which movies such as Daddy, Company, the Shootout series, the Sarkar series, etc. originated; needless to say, the real stories were far more interesting.

In places, Khan jumps the gun, revealing sometimes too soon the eventual fate of the hitman/ henchman, even while his story is in the midst of unfolding. Even so, 'The Dirty Dozen' was a great read to end 2017!