Murder, she wrote!

A couple of women crime writers are blazing a trail through literary circles, infusing the mystery genre with their distinctive styles

BY CHITRA SUDARSHAN

Although Indo Anglia has come of age and there is a new author popping up every week in India or some corner of the world, one genre has eluded the group until recently: mystery novels. That has now been set right by the publication of a series of mystery novels in recent years.

Perhaps the very young Mumbai-born and based Ashok Banker was the first to attempt mystery novels in India: he wrote three of them in quick succession before moving on to other subjects. All is not lost, though. Two relatively new women authors have written three whodunits each in the last couple of years, and they are not bad at all.

One is Mumbai-based Kalpana Swaminathan, a surgeon and unabashedly crime-directed author, whose first novel Page 3 Murders, (Penguin India) introduced the readers to her heroine Private Eye Lalli, a sixtyish, silver haired sleuth not unlike Ms Marple, now retired from the police force, but is still LR – the Last Resort – when it comes to solving crimes in Mumbai.

The other author is Shamini Flint, a Malaysian-born, Singapore-based lawyer who has now turned to writing: her detective is the likable Inspector Singh of the Singapore police force, a portly, dishevelled, maverick Sikh, who follows his instincts, negotiates political pitfalls, and despite interference from higher echelons, solves crimes beginning with her first book Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder (Piatkus).

In Swaminathan’s Lalli mysteries, the narrator is the detective’s niece, a sort of Dr Watson, who tags along with her intrepid aunt; that is not the only murder mystery formula that the author follows: in Page 3 Murders, published in 2006, there are other tried and tested ones. There is an isolated bungalow, an old Parsee home on the outskirts of Mumbai accessed by a winding and narrow road, inhabited by a paediatrician who decides to invite a motley crew for a weekend. Lalli and her niece are included in the guest list, which includes (no surprises here) a novelist, a gossip columnist, a dancer, a doctor and his rich wife and an industrialist. The cook, a Bangladeshi refugee from the pavements of Mumbai serves up the most authentic and delicious dishes. Murder strikes, and our Lalli is left to solve the crime. In many ways it is a reworking of the classic Agatha Christie formula, and some may argue that the writer doesn’t quite pull off the transplantation of such setting and the plot into an Indian milieu. However, the author’s style is quite unpretentious, and despite the fact that the murder takes too long in coming, she constructs her plot well, and it is interesting in its own way. As one reviewer noted, ‘re-polished or fake antiques can also be a source of pleasure’, so there is every reason to commend this novel to readers everywhere. The fact that Swaminathan is a surgeon is a plus, as it definitely adds to the strength of the story telling.

Page 3 Murders was followed by The Gardener’s Song in 2008, and she has just published her third Lalli mystery Monochrome Madonna. The two later mysteries are set in a more domestic locale and are an improvement on the earlier novel in that the murder occurs quite early in the books, so the bulk of the novel can actually be devoted to solving the mysteries. The Lalli mysteries have captured the imagination of a sizable section of the English reading public in India to an extent that the publishers, Penguin Books, have launched an online game based on the book in which the players help Lalli solve a murder mystery in a Mumbai apartment!

Shamini Flint’s Inspector Singh Investigates series was launched in 2009 with the first title A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder. Inspector Singh of the Singapore police force is loath to leave his comfort zone –Singapore – and travel to Malaysia to solve a crime, but go he must. He is sent by Singapore to represent the interest of the former Singaporean model Chelsea Liew, who has been convicted of the murder of her former husband, Malaysian Alan Lee. As a Sikh police officer investigating in Malaysia, he is forced to negotiate not only the strained relationship between Malaysia in Singapore, but also the racial and religious tensions in the region. Here Flint’s superior writing strength and compassion come to the fore: she views and presents the reader with different perspectives on the clash of cultures, and never once lapses into a simplistic or uni-dimensional analysis of the tensions that exist in the region. Flint’s wonderful description of Kuala Lumpur evokes all the senses and smells of this metropolis, and being a trained lawyer, she is also able to lay bare the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of the Malaysian legal system.

Shamini Flint has written two more Inspector Singh mysteries in quick succession: A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul, and The Singapore School of Villany. In the latest, a murder in a law firm rips apart the fabric of Singapore society and exposes the ugly underbelly. Singh muses that perhaps coming home was not such a great idea after all! This series is not to be missed!