Anita Nair has been writing for nearly 20 years. But, the writer, who is best known for The Better Man, Ladies Coupe and Mistress, hadn’t experienced her toughest exercise in penning fiction until two years ago. In 2014, when she started working on her second thriller, Chain of Custody — part of her Inspector Borei Gowda series — a lot of things changed for her.

With Chain of Custody set to release this month, Nair says she has never felt this “emotionally spent and drained”. “This book took a huge toll on me. As a writer, you start internalising your stories. And, with this work, the more I internalised, the more horrified and angry I became,” the 50-year-old writer says in a telephonic interview from Bengaluru.