Apu’s World

Some weeks ago, a friend and I were discussing MNIK. Short version : She liked it, I didn’t it. So, she suggested that perhaps I don’t have enough of that ‘willing suspension of disbelief‘ that the poet Coleridge suggested as essential for readers to digest fantastic tales.

I realized that was true, when I read Smita Jain’s new murder mystery, Piggies on the Railway, the first in what promises to be a series of ‘Katie Kumar mysteries.’ Why else would the first things to occur to me be that junior-IPS-officers-turned-detectives surely don’t make enough money to acquire Tahiliani outfits or that female IPS officers are rarely posted to combat zones like the Maoist heartland of Chattisgarh?

Yet, despite many such (what seemed to me) factual unlikelihoods, Piggies on the Railway isn’t an entirely bad read. It mixes up chik-lit and detective fiction genres, and in the process ticks many boxes that are perhaps a must for your average page turner. Gorgeous men. Tick. Plenty of sex. Tick. Dead bodies. Tick. A detective with a personality. Tick. Multiple suspects and multiple motives. Tick. Katie Kumar, the detective and narrator is partly unbelievable, but still funny enough to entertain.

If there is a bigger grouse, it is that the book is too long to be a totally easy read. I mean, 400 pages? Tranquebar could have devoted some energy to pruning it down to a more manageable 250 pages or so. Towards the latter half, one feels as if the author is playing some sort of roulette by spinning around suspects and motives and possibilities, until the story becomes almost difficult to keep track of. Numerous affairs and side plots add to the complication.

This is one murder mystery that could do with fewer twists and turns.

Publisher: Tranquebar Press

Price: Rs. 295

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apu The Literary life