The Emperor’s Riddles

Author Om Patnaik gets a panicked message from the historian Ram Mathur and hurries to the ghats of Varanasi. He arrives too late. Ram has been brutally killed, his right eye gouged out and a single cryptic letter carved into his face.

After his death, Ram's email reaches his daughter Sia, an astrophysicist, and it holds the first clue to a puzzle he died protecting. Needing answers, Sia asks Om to work with her. At the same time, police officer Parag Suri and his team begin to see that Ram's murder is tied to a series of strange killings in other parts of India.

Om and Sia follow a trail of riddles that carries them from place to place across the country. Each killing, clue and location leads them closer to a royal secret some two thousand years old, tied to one of the greatest emperors in Indian history.

Satyarth Nayak's novel mixes a murder investigation with ancient history, so the race to solve the puzzles is also a hunt through the past. It was a bestseller on its first publication in India.