Ritual: Uttaran Das Gupta

The crows were making a racket, and a municipal truck was sprinkling water on the streets in an attempt to wash away the dirt of the city.
 
In Uttaran Das Gupta’s Ritual, bodies of pre-teen girls are turning up all over the city of Kolkata with their hearts surgically removed. The unsolved crimes are soon consigned to the dusty archives until Rukmini Bose, a woman who runs an NGO in the city pushes college flame ACP Ashutosh to investigate. Together with his trusted deputy Pradeep Batabyal, the two policemen tumble across a diabolical scheme involving a religious cult headed by a sinister Yogi called Premananda.
 
Since I love reading stories set in Kolkata, obviously I was fascinated by the blurb. Crime thriller plus Kolkata. What’s not to love? While the plot - at times - tended towards the macabre, it was one hell of an enjoyable ride. Let’s just say I willingly suspended disbelief to read the novel. The narrative was gripping and the atmospheric descriptions of the city and the weather kept pace with the ominous goings on.
 
The protagonist ACP Ashutosh, his deputy Pradeep Batabyal and the supporting characters were well fleshed out with fascinating back stories and there were enough twists and turns to keep me guessing. Parallels could be drawn between the fictitious yogi in saffron and his violent followers and real-life figures. To sum it up, Ritual was one hell of a roller coaster ride with an exciting climax. The ending left me wanting more, many questions unanswered. But that is what a good novel does to a reader, right?

A Death in the Himalayas: Udayan Mukherjee

Clare Watson is murdered in an idyllic Himalayan village nestled in the Kumaon hills. The dead woman turns out to be an activist and author of a contentious book who has managed to ruffle a lot of feathers due to her work. The village is home to celebrated Parsi ex-cop Neville Wadia who has retired to the hills with his wife after near burnout over the tragic fallout of his last case. Still wrestling with the ghosts of his past, he is asked to help out with the investigation.
 
This novel has several things going for it. For one, Mukherjee makes the hills come alive through his writing. The pacing of the plot matches the unhurried pace of life in Birtola which comes to an abrupt halt due to the vicious murders. The good thing is that there aren’t too many characters to complicate the narrative. However one wishes the characters had more depth and backstories but Neville Wadia and wife Shernaz more than make up for it. 
 
The social commentary is nuanced taking into consideration the environmental toll of unbridled construction along with the perspective of the land grabbers, political mafia and villagers. Obvious political colour aside, A Death in the Himalayas is a story well told. Mukherjee has a simple but eloquent style. I had guessed who the killer might be early on in the novel but that is probably because I read far too many murder mysteries. There are enough red herrings to distract the lay reader before the final reveal.

Silent Parade: Keigo Higashino

If there is one author that can be credited with popularizing Japanese crime fiction not just in the West but the rest of Asia, it is Keigo Higashino. I hadn’t read much of Japanese crime fiction before Higashino but after reading Malice, The Devotion of Suspect X and Salvation of a Saint in one gulp, I went on to read a slew of crime novels by authors such as Riku Onda (The Aosawa Murders) and Yukito Ayatsuji (Decagon House Murders) among others. 

Higashino is a master of crime fiction. His novels follow the Japanese honkaku tradition of storytelling where the actual crime is a mind-boggling puzzle full of twists and turns, the narrative is liberally sprinkled with red herrings and unreliable witnesses. Clues and a list of suspects are provided at the start of the novel and one notices the sense of fair play throughout the narrative. In fact, Higashino’s novels move from the traditional whodunit into the whydunit and howdunit territory. The narrative reveals why and how the criminal commits the crime. 

 

In Silent Parade, the remains of a beautiful young girl who had gone missing are discovered in the basement of a burned down house. The police narrow in on a suspect accused of a hideous crime in the past. Unfortunately, the detectives are unable to find conclusive evidence that tie him to the two deaths. The suspected killer goes scot-free till he is found dead during a popular street festival. Chief Inspector Kusanagi who has worked the earlier cases is called in to investigate and he turns to Manabu Yukawa or Detective Galileo to help him figure out how the man died and reconstruct what happened in the past.

 

The concept, combining elements of a locked-room mystery with a police procedural, is brilliant as usual and Higashino never fails to surprise me. You think he's given away the plot right at the beginning & you are confused. How can it be that simple?  But the man draws you in & keeps you turning the pages in anticipation with twists & turns along the way. The final reveal will knock your socks off. He is clearly inspired by Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and even mentions the book in a passage: Kusanagi suspected that a cabin on the Orient Express, the train from Agatha Christie’s famous novel, would be more comfortable than his hotel room.

 

The thing that I found disconcerting about the book is the clunky and rather unwieldy language that disrupted the flow of the narrative. Crime fiction deserves crisp storytelling. And then I noticed that this book has a different translator - perhaps I was not used to his style. The earlier books I’d read had a different translator. There were several tiresome repetitions in the text as well. For instance, when diners come to a restaurant - a key place in the story, Natsumi (the owner’s daughter) greets them with a towel and then puts a bottle of beer, a glass and an appetizer on their tables. Perhaps it wasn’t necessary to mention this fact every single time someone comes to the restaurant. The frequent switches from using the first name (for a character) to surname were slightly confusing – I had to keep going back to the list of characters at the beginning to determine who was being described. Towards the end of the novel, there was an abrupt switch to first person narrative. At this point, the plot had become extremely convoluted and it could have been simplified.

 

Having said that, it was a page-turner and a gripping read overall. While Malice and Salvation of a Saint are my top choices, this would come a close second.

Murders in Kolkata 26: Anisha Bhaduri

A young police officer, Satyadeb Halder, is tasked with the job of solving two murders in the neighbourhood he has grown up in. One of the daughters of the wealthy Mitra household has been killed, garroted viciously in her bed. A few days later, the family's maid meets with the same fate. As he dives deeper into the investigation, Satyadeb discovers many unexplained deaths and a link between his own family and that of the dead women. The police officer must journey back into the past to join the dots and find the killer.

Murders in Kolkata 26 by Anisha Bhaduri, available on the Juggernaut Books app and Amazon Kindle, is an interesting, short read.  What I really really liked about the novella are the descriptions of a part of Kolkata I am familiar with. The author takes readers through the lanes and by lanes of Bhowanipore drawing vivid word pictures of the lifestyles of the rich and the not-so-rich with their quirks and oddities. 
 
A few typos aside, the language has a lyrical quality about it. While the climax felt a bit rushed (I’d have liked more of a suspense build-up and a better understanding of the characters’ motives and backstories), there was just the right amount of surprise thrown in. There was a lot in the novella that I could personally relate to – so full marks for convincing characterization and creation of atmosphere.