Minty Mehta, aka MM, is a thrill-seeker, a disgraced, self-destructive, ex-army cadet with a taste for hard drugs and kinky sex, and a shrewd reporter who will do anything to get a story. His connections reach deep into the heart of India's unsavory political establishment, and into the army--his current beat--where his bravery earns the trust and admiration of even more unsavory sources.

Following Special Forces on a series of deadly missions on the Kashmiri border, MM confirms his suspicion that a rogue band of officers is smuggling drugs and captured weapons out of India's jungle frontier. When a raid on an enemy bunker uncovers an enormous cache of arms and high-grade heroin, the commander in charge taps MM to unload the goods, and he finds himself enmeshed in an international net of gunrunning, gang warfare, and double-dealing more dangerous than anything he's undertaken so far.

Cynical, knowing, highly capable and deeply motivated, MM is a postmodern hero in the same nihilistic vein as the protagonists of Hunter S. Thompson and Carl Hiaasen. The debut novel by the investigative journalist dubbed The King of Sting and India's most feared reporter for his exposure of illegal arms dealing and other corruption in India, joins the ranks of world-class suspense authors with an insider's look at the serpentine challenges of modern India.

About the Book

AN EASY TO READ, ANECDOTAL ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF ONE OF INDIA'S BEST-KNOWN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS.

ANIRUDDHA BAHAL has spelt trouble for the Establishment for as long as he can even remember. As a boy of barely fifteen, he ran away from home, all the way from Allahabad to Bombay-returning a week later, chastened and penniless, but with valuable lessons learnt. As a journalist, he transformed the definition and boundaries of reporting with the risks he took and the stories he chased down. And he paid the price for it. As a writer, his first novel won him international recognition- as well as the Bad Sex in Fiction Award, handed to him by no less a personage than Sting. As an entrepreneur, he went against the grain in setting up an investigative news portal at a time when speaking truth to power was no longer on the agenda of media houses. Over the years, this restless, mischievous boy from a village in Uttar Pradesh has come to epitomise the rough and tumble of political journalism in New Delhi. What does such a man see and remember when he looks back? Of people, incidents, turning points, the disappointments and the triumphs, both personal and professional? Some memories, Bahal says, are better left buried, but A Taste for Trouble brings together those that continue to keep him anchored in the present and hopeful about the future.

About the Author

Aniruddha Bahal is the founder and editor-in-chief of Cobrapost.com, an Indian investigative, non- profit website. Previously, he worked for India Today, Down to Earth, Financial Express and Outlook, among other publications. He also co-founded Tehelka.com.

Bahal is the author of two novels, Bunker 13 (2003) and The Emissary (2010) and a comic, The Adventures of Rhea: The Cobrapost Affair (2015).