Books: Kolkata comes alive in this noir with a conscience

“You know, Minnie dear, it was said that every tragedy falls into two parts; a complication that is then followed by an unravelling.” This was said by Aristotle in the fourth century BC, Michael Marco informs his protégé Koel Deb (‘Minnie’), tossing across yet another quote from the greats. Reflecting the customary scholarly heft Marco brings to their partnership to solve the seven cases in this collection of detective stories, the quote also provides an example of the literary altitude the book flies at.

This unlikely pairing has done a great deal of unravelling in the seven detective novels written by Srinivasan before ‘Kolkata Crimes’, making their partnership feel as comfortable as an old quilt to the reader. They couldn’t have been more different as people though. Michael Marco is a distinguished retired Somali Ambassador, with the quiet self-deprecation that often accompanies enormous accomplishment and knowledge — he’s not unlike the author himself, a former Foreign Secretary and a career diplomat of standing.

A philosopher-sleuth, Marco is able to zoom back and forth from the ether of big insights to tiny grubby details in a jiffy. Koel Deb is more earthy, with edgy courage powered by her acuity, instinct and ability to live dangerously with a bionic arm (and even leverage it as a weapon at times). She lost the real one when she was shot below her left elbow, and had to retire from the Indian Police Service to become Kolkata’s only female private investigator. Her steed of choice — a Harley Davidson — completes the picture of someone who is not afraid to vroom off anywhere in an instant, if need be. A great foil to the reflective Marco who usually sticks to his abode, The Wise Owl, a modest comfotel on Purna Das Road, from where he deduces away.

What unites them, though, is their shared values. As they work through very different cases, they end up choosing the uniquely “right” resolution for each of them instead of dragging every case to court. “Compassion is more worthy than punishment, my dear Minnie, and once admitted, there is nothing that cannot be absolved”, Marco concludes about one of the cases, putting it to bed.

Many themes are explored through the cases, displaying Srinivasan’s vast canvas. These include political aspirations along with its seamy side (goons, bomb-making, corruption et al); bisexuality and the secrecy that still needs to surround it; an attempt to fix a prestigious race during prime horse racing season in Kolkata; art forgery and blackmail; murder of an actor in a theatrical troupe; and questions around women’s safety seen through the lens of a horrific murder of the daughter of a famous Swiss academic. Human motivations for the crimes are explored carefully and even gently, but the truth is ruthlessly sought, even if one of the guilty turns out to be a friend.

As the stories unfold, Kolkata comes alive as a city because many of its familiar hangouts lace the pages. The Taj Bengal hotel lounge, elite clubs, the Netaji Indoor Stadium, Flurys, the Lalbazar police station, the race course, Calcutta Art Gallery, The Elgin Fairlawn hotel, Ramakrishna Mission Library and Rabindra Sarobar — to name a few — collectively hold the collection together just as much as the sleuthing duo.

Srinivasan’s knowledge about forensics and the medical aspect of how to get poisons to do their job is impressive for someone who has had nothing to do with these disciplines. Nowhere is this brilliance more on display that in the last story in the book — ‘The Unravelling’ — which deals with a stomach-churning murder, a story long and multi-layered enough to be a book by itself. Here’s an illustrative extract from a doctor’s autopsy report of the body of the victim in this story:

“The real damage lay beneath the skin; the left temporal skull fracture measured four by two-and-a-half inches in diameter. Here, there was macroscopic bruising to pulpification. While fractures of the skull do not cause death unless the brain inside is damaged, the victim had deep frontal contusions of the brain.”

Well. Medicine lost out to diplomacy, it turns out.

Impressive as his knowledge of technical details is, it is Srinivasan’s oneness with his sleuths that is singular. It’s not difficult to imagine why the author is able to paint Marco for the reader so effectively, because it takes one unassuming and brilliant scholar/diplomat to concoct another. But getting inside the skin of the quite extraordinary Koel Deb (the stories are written in first person by her) requires another level of empathy and intuition about what such a person would wear, think, do and need from her mentor. Srinivasan nails the calm, gutsy, attractive Koel Deb, even as he breezes through his characterisation of Marco and his literary aplomb.

Gripping, believable and engrossing, each page lends itself to a frame and the collection could easily be turned into a series with great appeal for any OTT platform. Regardless, the book is exactly what the doctor ordered for cold winter nights, to keep us warm and guessing till lights-out time.

— The reviewer is translator of ‘Chittaranjan’ by Aparna Debi and author of ‘Changemaking Network Effects: A Playbook for Social Entrepreneurs’