Book Review | Woman-led juicy whodunit packs a bionic punch

There are four simple knock-out tests for whodunits: Does it make you wait till the very end to discover who did it? Can the reader “see” the detective — or detectives — at work, and feel the thrill of their quirky minds in motion (genius can’t afford to be commonplace}? Do all the little clues add up to enable the final unmasking of the guilty and are peripherally connected? And last, is the reader’s voyage of discovery a smooth ride, without speed-breakers that slow down the page-turning?

Krishnan Srinivasan’s Right Angle to Life passes all four tests.

This is the seventh in the series of Koel Deb (a private detective) and her mentor Ambassador Michael Marco’s comfortable partnership in unravelling mysteries, and reflects the ease with which they can think and solve in concert.

Deb is a former police officer who had to leave the police force after being shot in the left arm, causing her to use a prosthetic hand which she sometimes deploys as a weapon. The aged and distinguished Ambassador Michael Marco had been an envoy of Somalia and is a Bharat Ratna recipient. Although Deb’s quest dominates this work, Marco’s separate investigation coincidentally but conveniently converges with hers to tie up what appeared to be a few loose ends in both cases.

All the elements for a juicy read are present. A mysterious, brilliant soft-core movie-maker whose actual identity is unknown; a famous Bollywood film director; unrequited love; a social activist who drums up media attention against the portrayal of women as sex objects; a sensuous woman with dark secrets; a seedy blackmailer who chances on these secrets; links with corridors of power in Kolkata high society; skirmishes with hoodlums in dark alleys; and inevitably, the lure of lucre that draws patently no-good thugs as well as the vulnerable who weakly turn a tragedy they didn’t intentionally bring about into personal financial gain.

Koel Deb is commissioned by the state home minister, Nirav Subhash, to investigate the murder of a famous Bollywood director Ranvir Sethi in Burdwan, whom Deb and Marco had happened to meet at a party in the opening chapter. At the party, Sethi had expressed his admiration for Rajiv Baras, purportedly the maker of Daughter of the Clouds, which Sethi considered “the finest film produced in the country”, although soft-core. Sethi had wanted to find Baras and persuade him to return to making movies with Sethi and “perhaps even re-release Daughter of the Clouds”.

This desire led him to his death in Burdwan — the puzzle that Koel Deb sets out to solve, armed with her Glock 17 and a Harley Elektra (which she had bought from the West Bengal’s police department’s auction). Reporting directly to the home minister, Deb vrooms off to Burdwan on her smashing Harley (which never failed to impress all who were unsure about taking her seriously), in search of the elusive Baras.

Although Deb solves the murder she sets out to investigate, the explanation for an extraneous jigsaw piece from her quest comes from her mentor Marco, who had been roped in by Kolkata police to help with the murder investigation of an African woman, whose corpse was found in Bandel — a parallel story.

An interesting social discourse reflecting changing social mores is laced into the main plot in the form of opinions aired by the characters in the book. For example, in the face of criticism of soft-core films by Jyoti Dutta the feminist activist, Bollywood director Rajiv Sethi counters: “Even soft-core films can have merit and artistic beauty, such as the French Emanuelle series has shown us”, and continues, “Did you ever consider that even in so-called degrading circumstances women like Sylvia Kristel can exhibit strength, love and beauty?” A general agnosticism towards this issue (more than strident opposition or defence) is displayed by many of the players. And while the female characters combine various degrees of strength and vulnerability, they all own their decisions fully, good or bad.

The author’s own career as a diplomat and former foreign secretary informs his authentic and endearing characterisation of the understated but brilliant Ambassador Michael Marco, whose “understandings were always at right angles to life as we understand it” — an observation by Koel Deb. For precisely this reason, the intuitive leaps that finally tie the parallel investigations require the reader to pay careful attention to the logic at this stage (relaxing with tea and biscuits with book in hand expecting to breeze through the end isn’t going to cut it). Deb and Marco will have none of that.

Sushmita Ghosh has been a journalist, writer and translator, and works as a social entrepreneur

Right Angle to Life

By Krishnan Srinivasan

Har-Anand

pp. 195, Rs 495