The Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction Volumes I and II

The Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction #1-2

by Tarun K. Saint (Editor)

The professionals meet the amateurs in this first–ever anthology of Indian detective fiction.

Volume 1

An elite squad detective from the future travels back in time to hunt down a time escapee.

Across the city of Tokyo, liquids are turning blue, and elsewhere a Tamil actress is kidnapped.

The gruesome murder of an adult industry star spirals into a web of deceit and leads to a bizarre revelation.

A journalist races against time to find the missing link between the deaths of a daily soap actress, a classical vocalist and a famous painter.

And more...

Volume 2

A detective delves into a cold case; a ship that disappeared in the Bay of Bengal in the year 1913.

A man is bludgeoned to death in an apartment and a piece of paper with the word 'STOP!' is nailed to his forehead.

Six deaths under mysterious circumstances and the only common link is a box of arsenic–laced sweets.

A soldier's homecoming dredges up memories of a murder that took place a decade ago in the family.

And more...

The first–ever anthology of its kind, The Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction compiles more than 30 compelling whodunits, supernatural mysteries, serial murders and absurd crimes spread across two volumes. Through hybrid, self–reflexive and experimental forms of writing (including translations from Bengali and Tamil), this collection invites readers to unravel mysteries with every turn of the page, masterfully showcasing distinctive instances of the genre.

Red herrings simmered in blood gravy, served up with family feuds, ancient curses, long–haired lady sleuths and many other typical subcontinental chutneys provide a rare feast for the avid reader of crime fiction!

Featuring the works

Volume 1

Satyajit Ray * Gopa Majumdar * Saradindu Bandopadhyay * Gopa Majumdar * Ambai * Gita Subramanian * Ankush Saikia * Meeti Shroff Shah * Suchitra Bhattacharya * Radha Chakravarty * Sujan DasGupta * Chandana Dutta * Anirudh Kala * Tamilvanan * Rabindranath Tagore * Shampa Roy * Anil Menon * Tanuj Solanki * Timeri Murari * Navin Weeraratne * Kehkashan Khalid * Sumit Bardhan * Kiran Manral * Shweta Taneja * Saad Z. Hossain

Volume 2

Rajarshi Das Bhowmik * Arunava Sinha * Vikram Chandra * Giti Chandra * Swati Kaushal * Ajay Chowdhury * Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay * Debaditya Mukhopadhyay * Vish Dhamija * Salil Desai * Mahendra Jakhar * Sharatchandra Sarkar * Shampa Roy * Vaseem Khan * Nev March * Anuradha Kumar * Madhulika Liddle * Arjun Raj Gaind * Shashi Warrier * Avtar Singh

For detailed content, please look inside the book.

* Illustration continuity across covers and spine

* 2–volume collectible (Royal 8vo hardback set)

* A magnetic clasp box–wrap

* Detective–element themed sprayed edges

* Endpaper artwork by Manjula Padmanabhan

997 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 5, 2024

Reviews

[Ahtims · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had waited some time eagerly for this book, bought it at 20% discount and started reading it eagerly.
However was quite disappointed.
The best of the stories are 3 star ones, and many only 2 stars with a couple of very shoddy tales.
Only good thing about this was the cover art and the paper quality.

[Vaibhav Srivastav · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good attempt waylaid by a lack of evenness in the quality of Stories. The classics mentioned here remain good and is a primer on exploring detective fiction authors, however lacks the expected punch

[Ameya Joshi · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's like that Life is a Box of Chocolates line - prepare to be surprised (sometimes pleasantly) but also occasionally disappointed as well

I was very excited about this anthology given my fascination for the genre, and forever craving to have a more desi flavour to these tales (as my review history would attest). Penning this down after completing part 1 - an effort which took me the better part of 3 months, the later half was quite the trudge to get through (thanks to various other excuses but I digress - it always says something about the artform if it is not unputdownable).

The important part to takeaway here for all future readers is that Tanuj Saini has gone for breadth and diversity over what one may term as pureplay 'quality' (alternative explanations being that quality is extremely subjective, or a limited currency in this specific genre). We therefore see a lot of experimentative work which did not always appeal to me - but if the motive is to get readers to explore something 'different', then mission accomplished.

The essay at the start is a delight, and a lovely history of the genre. I loved the effort to tell us more about the authors of each tale. And as many have already waxed eloquent about this - the cover and box makes it a collectors delight - at a reasonably affordable price as well.

Breaking down into a short review of each story for posterity and memory:

• The Locked Chest - Satyajit Ray - 3/5
A typical Feluda - enjoyable but clearly aimed at more a young adult genre, then adult. The journey to rural Bengal is most interesting part, I felt the focus on the riddles show a society of bhodrolok still under the influence of their western masters.

• The Rhythm of the Riddles - Saradindu Bandopadhyay - 3.5/5
Again a typical Byomkesh Bakshi. Both Feluda and Byomkesh Bakshi books almost feel de-gored and de-sexed in a way (not that I am particularly keen on those in a good detective novel - neither Christie or Doyle resorted to those) but these Bengali detective stories really make you aware of them being sanitised for a family audience (probably a function of the Pujo Specials). The view of pre-partition Bengal as a whole is an interesting historical perspective, now 75+ years on.

• Sepal - Ambai - 2.5/5
I liked the monotony and everyday-ness of the setting here in modern Mumbai. The narrative voice did not appeal to me (there is an unintentional Indian aunty-ish 'I know better' vibe throughout) and while it is commendable to add the LGBT angle in this setting - it just seems a bit random.

• The River - Ankush Sakia - 3.5/5
Compared to the previous 3 stories, this isn't one which eschews complexity for the length of the form. Arjun Arora's brooding detective is a staple of the genre, he is in familiar haunting grounds in the North East, and we get political & corporate machinations neatly intertwined with local elements.

• Gulmohar House - Meeti Shroff-Shah - 3.5/5
Liked the writing and the characters from the extended family. A good premise, but the ending - while not illogical - was a bit of an anti-climax. Would definitely not mind further exploring this author.

• Lethal Air - Suchitra Bhattacharya - 3/5
The premise and setting felt very real with misogynistic cops and the extended Indian family set-up so points for that, even though I am now realising all the Bengali detective fiction seems to have a similar tone.

• A Diamond is Forever - Sujan Dasgupta - 3/5
Mixed thoughts on this one. The setting in the Indian academia diaspora, the multiple characters (clearly part of a larger series of work), the ingenious plot, and commentary on Indian and Bengali culture abroad all made this interesting reading. But it was not easy to keep track the way the story is written, and I felt a lot was lost in translation (or is clearly not aimed at a non-Bengali audience).

• No Thermometer for Insanity - Anirudh Kala - 4/5
This was one of my personal favorites in the book. Loved the writing style, the flavour and 'mahaul' of Punjab, and the character and setting as well.

• Tokyo Rose - Tamilvnan - 2/5
Your mileage may vary but we are getting into the Tamil pop-culture over-the-top kitsch and fantasy territory which is not my cup of tea or 'blue liquid'. The plot seemed secondary to the character of Shankarlal (the King of Detectives) similar to what I imagine a Rajnikanth movie does. Sure it was written in the 60's but still...

• Detective - Rabindranath Tagore - 3.5/5
An intelligent, comic rumination and political commentary. Not the most detailed of stories, but clearly at a level above some of the others in this anthology as befitting a Nobel laureate.

• A Death Considered - Anil Menon - 3.5/5
This is about how a detective story writer is going about constructing his plot and I really liked this tale while it was ongoing. Though not taking it through to closure (I understand this was by design) made it feel like it was fizzling out.

• The Desire of the Detective - Tanuj Solanki - 4/5
One of the writers in this collection who I have very high expectations from. Diwali in Muzaffarnagar is one of my favorite Indian short-story collections of recent times. This was enjoyable - also probably because it was very different from some of the Bengali stories that precede - and really letting the Big City feels seep in with high-rises, cab rides, guns, affairs, corrupt cops and more as a detective-who-wants-to-be-a-writer investigates the death of a writer-of-detective-fiction. Desi noir done right.

• She has my Name - Timeri N. Murari - 3/5
Unnamed protagonists in a shadowy war against the 'state'. More a spy thriller than detective fiction with a father-on-the-run coming to claim the body of his daughter, with a twist which I should have seen coming but I did not. I thought this was set in Sri Lanka for some reason, but it's actually from a writer who writes on Afghanistan.

• DeathGPT - Navin Weeraratne - 3/5
We now get into experimentative territory in the anthology. This one had AI based adult-content stars being killed off. Interesting premise.

• Andheri Nagri - Kehkashan Khalid - 2/5
Fantasy with time-travel on the chase of a vigilante set in Karachi (but really with very little flavour of Karachi). Not something I enjoy, and it was a bit too abstract to drag me in, was basically looking forward to it finishing which is never a good sign (especially with a short-story).

• Death of an Actress - Sumit Bardhan - 3.5/5
Enjoyed the trail of this story here set in Modern Kolkata though I kept wondering what's with the weird names. The twist at the end was anti-climactic but a solid surprise nonetheless piecing things together.

• Witch Hunting - Kiran Manral - 2/5
Similar to Andheri Nagari - time travel, sci-fi and cyberpunk (?) are not my choices. Kiran Manral's writing did not drag me in - the exposition and context felt very unnatural and not of the 'show not tell' variety.

• A Messiah of Tears and Broken Things - Shweta Taneja - 2.5/5
A wonderful setting with tons of potential to hunt down a murderer amongst the Aghori tantriks. But this was difficult to read because of the language (especially the choice of making this a first-person driven tale), the mix of 'technical terms' from the sect and tantrists, and just understanding the characters (in fact I still did not understand if we had a mix of real characters and imaginary ones). I get not wanting to 'dumb things down' for your audience, but for an origin story - there wasn't enough of a hook for me to want to follow this character's further adventures.

• The Detective of Black Korail - Saad Z. Hossain
See notes for Andheri Nagari and Witch Hunting. Not my genre of choice, and this mix of Bangladeshi bureaucracy with magic, golems, djinns, parallel universes and more which did not manage to drag me in or want me to come back from more.

[Madhulika Liddle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A two-volume set of books, featuring detective stories from India, though with a few writers from other countries of the subcontinent as well. I have a story in this collection (A Convenient Corpse, set in 1656 and featuring my detective, Muzaffar Jang), but I will focus on the other stories in this anthology, not my own.

The initial stories of Volume 1 is where one finds the classic greats of Indian detective fiction: Satyajit Ray’s much-loved Feluda, in The Locked Chest; Saradindu Bandyopadhyay’s Byomkesh Bakshi, solving The Rhythm of the Riddles. There’s also, later in the volume, Rabindranath Tagore’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek Detective. Interspersed with these classics are newer stories, by newer writers. They differ widely in style, in complexity, even in tone. Also included in this volume are a bunch of cross-genre stories, most of which marry detective fiction to science fiction.

Volume 2 is devoted to two types of detective fiction: the police procedural, and the historical detective. Almost 80 pages are taken up here by Vikram Chandra’s Kama, which I didn’t care for; but the other stories made up for it. The police procedurals run the gamut from classic sleuthing by cops, to the hilarity of Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s When Goyenda Met Daroga. Several policewomen also star in these stories, yay.

Among the historical detectives, Muzaffar is the only pre-colonial detective; the others are all set in different times, different parts, of the British Raj. They’re very varied, again, but my favourites here were Arjun Raj Gaind’s The Diva’s Last Bow and Shashi Warrier’s evocative Murder in the Monsoons.

(Somewhat longer and more detailed review at my blog, here: https://madhulikareads.wordpress.com/...)

[Achal Khaneja · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed bag with islands of excellence but also many disappointments.

[Saibal Dasgupta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Collection

Enjoyed reading this collection of stories. Each a page turner in their own account. The translation from original work is also great.