‘The Artful Murder’ by Feisal Alkazi: The art of whodunit
The author manages to avoid many of the tropes murder mysteries employ
Updated At : 02:03 PM Feb 24, 2025 IST
The Artful Murders: A Ragini Malhotra Mystery by Feisal Alkazi. Speaking Tiger. Pages 352. Rs 499
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Book Title: The Artful Murders: A Ragini Malhotra Mystery
Author: Feisal Alkazi
Detective novels follow a familiar trope. A crime, a sharp detective, clues thrown in at the right time, which only that detective can decipher and piece together, leaving the other characters, and the reader, in awe (how come the detective is so smart and I’m not!). The novel then becomes a celebration of the lone sleuth’s prowess. Thankfully, Feisal Alkazi manages to avoid many of these tropes in ‘The Artful Murders’.
Detective novels are also very plot-driven and avoid deviations. This novel relishes in the “deviations”. Yes, there is a case to solve, but it’s equally interesting to notice what’s going on outside of the shadow of murders.
The plot is about the murder of an elderly lady, Mrs Krishnamurthi, in her South Delhi flat and the killing of Pratap, a cab driver from the same locality, on the Pune highway, and finding the elusive link between the two cases.
So, who’s investigating? There are many “detectives” in the story, every character going through doubts and hunches, confirming them, cancelling them.
There is a team leader, Ragini Malhotra (Mrs M), in her sixties, who’s good at making deductions based on observations. There is Raunaq, an autowallah, whose roommate Rudy was Pratap’s lover. There is Vikas, the beat constable, Ragini’s college friends Ayesha, Nariman and Fernandes, the latter a senior police officer. Ragini also has help from Premlata Puri, a detective handling “pre-marital and extramarital” cases. Everyone’s assigned a role; remove one character and the cases shall remain unsolved. Perhaps only Alkazi could have made everyone so integral to the drama because of his long years as a theatre director, documentary maker and activist.
There’re also some characters he keeps in the shadows, whose motives the detectives try to guess: Shobhana Shadaliya, a Mumbai socialite last seen with Pratap the driver; Saudamini, the niece of the murdered lady; Afroz Ahmed, a scientist connected to both Shobhana and Saudamini; and Alfie, Rudy’s new lover.
And to this complex web, Alkazi adds the intrigue of art deals: an MF Husain painting missing from Mrs Krishnamurthi’s flat; Ragini’s job as a gallerist at Triveni Kala Sangam; her friend Ayesha’s life as an artist and a mysterious art collector.
The city of Delhi is a character, too, ever-present, driving the story forward — Delhi Metro commutes that lead to new discoveries; the Imperial Hotel where the suspect Saudamini stays; a crumbling old Delhi haveli whose owner has secrets to keep.
It’s an engrossing tale. Alkazi makes you believe in something and then uses a character to overturn that hypothesis. But there’s only so much you can do with a murder mystery that has to add up eventually. As the story nears its conclusion, the web Alkazi has woven becomes difficult for him to clearly untangle.
But that’s not what the novel really is about, is it? What stays isn’t the story but the details around it — the life of poor migrants; the dialects the city speaks; struggles of closeted gays; the stratas the city is built upon, the food, the weather.
But let’s return to our lead investigator. One disservice in the marketing of such novels is to compare the detective’s talent to famous characters — say Miss Marple or Sherlock. We should assess Mrs M’s and her team’s abilities independently. The book is about an elderly woman solving a case based on observations, conjectures and with help from friends. She is democratic, transparent and sharp, but unsure of herself. Just this makes her next case worth the wait.
— The writer is a marketing professional
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