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Biography

Adhirath Sethi’s second novel, Where the Hills Hide Their Secrets, is a gripping mystery…Weaving together the lives of three characters as they navigate the ups and downs of everyday, Where the Hills Hide Their Secrets has a way of being familiar and relatable, interspersed with unimaginable surprises sprung at the reader.

Firstpost

The Debt Collector’s Due by Adhirath Sethi is an adventure story about how odds turn even in the long run. It takes the reader through the busy streets of Mumbai, pauses brielfy in an idyllic Parsi Colony for a quick murder, and then rushes forward to a scenic, but foggy Panchgani. This one makes for a gripping read.

Society Magazine

Adhirath Sethi is the new guy in the Indian crime fiction/thriller arena. The best parts of the books are easily the humourous ones. Sethi’s favourite writers are, among others, P.G Wodehouse and Somerset Maugham, and it shows in his work.

Financial Chronicle

The Debt Collector’s Due is a taut thriller about an ordinary man who is plunged into a dizzying vortex…The lightness of the writing never ceases to be witty and immensely quotable.

The New Indian Express

Author & Humourist

Welcome to my twisted mind

Adhirath Sethi is the author of two novels, Where The Hills Hide Their Secrets and The Debt Collector’s Due.

He realised very early on that people are less likely to judge you for wasting time writing than they are for when you play video games.

A former management consultant with The Boston Consulting Group, he took an all too eager plunge into entrepreneurship in 2008, only to be immediately confronted with the financial crisis. He took to writing as a way to keep sane during this time.

His first book – The Debt Collector’s Due – was published by HarperCollins and draws on his own experiences with hiring debt collectors to recover funds for his business.

As an individual he hopes to remain as uncomplicated as possible, most unlike what he expects of his stories. Despite all the experiences afforded to him by a childhood spent in boarding schools, he is an introvert whose ultimate daily ambition is to go home early.

He is an alumnus of The Rishi Valley School, Eton College and the London School of Economics. He is currently settled in Bangalore.

Q&A With Adhirath Sethi

I type... and yet, we're called writers, and not ‘typers’... it is most certainly strange.

This, and my first book, are just extrapolations of what a particular scenario looks like, they just sort of come to you. I’m lucky enough that I have some amount of time to play around with, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be weird if something like this happens?’ And then see how it plays along, what you can throw into the mix to make it more exciting. In the case of this book, the stories all come from some personal experience.

I liked the idea of a debt collector - someone with the most mundane of jobs - being plunged into the world of hit men and mob bosses.

I'm inspired by chain reactions. I love to imagine the trajectory of situations and gauge how different storylines will interact with one another.

Adhirath Sethi I'm working on two books. The first is a satire on the Management Consulting industry as seen through the eyes of a junior consultant. The second is a more elaborate story that is part crime drama, part love story and part thriller.

Live and breathe the plot you're working on. Let everything you do or see influence how you feel the story can move

Writing. Writing is the best part. If you aren't simply at bliss when penning down thoughts and ideas, there's really no point in doing it

Banging one's head against a desk is usually a great way to alleviate writer's block. Failing this, I find completely removing myself from the writer's process and allowing the next set of ideas to come to me is the only way to truly de-clog the creative juice pipe...