The Price You Pay By Somnath Batabyal

When Abhishek Dutta joins the Express as a trainee journalist, he has no idea how his life is about to change. Assigned to the crime beat by Chief Reporter Amir Akhtar, Abhishek encounters a motley cast of characters in the press and police DCP Uday Kumar, the ‘Dirty Harry’ of Delhi Police who has a penchant for shooting first and asking questions later ACP Crime Branch Mayank Sharma, who becomes a close friend Samir Saxena, channel head of News Today, who mentors Abhishek’s move from print to electronic journalism and dreaded gangster Babloo Shankar, who runs the Delhi mafia even though he is in exile. As he rides his beginner’s luck to unearth one sensational scoop after the other, Abhishek will soon discover that in the dog-eat-dog world of crime and politics, there are no permanent friends or enemies, it is every man for himself. With a plot that twists and turns like the inner lanes of the city, Somnath Batabyal’s debut novel takes you into the dark underbelly of an emerging superpower’s capital city, where common lives are mere pawns in deadly power games and where corruption lies at the very core.