I had written my first book Dial D for Don with considerable trepidation and diffidence. Uncertain whether my writing skills were adequate to meet the exacting standards of a published work, I soldiered on, nonetheless, as I was confident that my stories were worthy of being told and heard.

The book, an anthology of eleven accounts of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) operations conducted during the nine years I spent in the central investigative agency, was a decent success. Besides figuring on several bestseller lists for weeks, the book also elicited considerable interest from producers of web series, and film-makers were keen on buying the rights of the book. The overwhelming but humbling approbation makes both my publishers and me believe that there exists a considerable readership of true crime stories written in firstperson singular by a senior police officer.

The celebrated Mumbai-based crime writer S. Hussain Zaidi, who had initiated me into writing the first book, encouraged me to write again using the same template. Despite my initial reluctance, I decided, egged on by Milee Ashwarya of Penguin Random House and Zaidi sahib, to take another plunge.

I always thought writing the second book would be much easier than the first one. However, the experience of the first book had neither given me the habit nor the discipline of writing regularly. To make matters worse, my preoccupation with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), as the head of its anti-corruption and security unit, denied me the right frame of mind necessary to start writing again. Fortuitously, by an unexpected turn of events, I quit my job with the cricket body on 31 May 2018. The following day I was on my desk and my writing resumed.

To be continued.....