‘The Scratch and Sniff Chronicles’ by Hemangini Dutt Majumder: Girl who sniffs mysteries

The ghost of the past is the puppet master in Hemangini Dutt Majumder’s black comedy/m-urder mystery/gothic adventure. Its trained fingers pull the strings just enough to make the eccentric cast of characters dance to the tune of secrets not yet fully revealed.

The star of the stage, set in a Bengali household of three single women and their cat in Kolkata, is Olympia Ghoshal Chatterge, or Ollie, a heavyset young wine sommelier with such a sense of smell that she can separate every note in her surroundings. And these notes give clues to how the plot will move forward. For example: “Milk, fish, flea collar, well-licked feline private parts.” Or “Dusty books smell. Stagnant air cooler water. Aloe vera gel.”

She lives with her lawyer aunt, Basanti, nickname Fishy, and (adopted) cousin Laura, an architect, and everyone longs to return to their ancestral mansion, Neelbari (meaning blue house), in the town of Chandannagar, once a French colony.

The estate has been illegally usurped by Fishy’s stepmother, Labanga Latika, a classical dancer, with the support of the family priest.

As the story progresses, Fishy legally wins back the estate and the trio returns to the palatial house of their childhood, setting off a series of mishaps, misunderstandings, murders and coverups, with Ollie, the accidental detective, trying to sniff out and untangle the complex web built over decades in the “haunted” Neelbari.

The omnipresent narrator — Ollie’s mother, who died with her husband in Paris when her daughter was six and has ever since watched over her, refusing the serenity of afterlife — too is a character here.

Hemangini’s storytelling comes infused with Bengali phrases and quirks (meanings explained), serving as a crash course in Bengaliness, with sentences like this: “Chondoner moton mukh,” Tuni Pishi said, looking at his full moon-like face. Bengali food, its common delicacies like mangshor jhol or maachher jhal or luchi-alur dom become an important part of the story, where everyone is apparently a foodie.

‘The Scratch and Sniff Chronicles’ is also a witty, breezy whodunit told from the perspective of women (a refreshing frankness in the way they speak with each other or about one another), with men walking in and out, playing small supporting characters. Like Danish, the chemistry teacher, who is smitten by Ollie and keeps trailing her. Or police officer Pramanik, who keeps referring to the laws of physics while trying to decipher clues to the murders.

Certain points in the plot do seem melodramatic and some situations contrived, but the wittiness (even amid tragedy) rarely stops. The book could also have been shorter but to Hemangini’s credit, she doesn’t let the long ride get monotonous.

However, more than the murder mystery part or if there is a bhoot in the mansion, the book throws the reader in the middle of the chaos that the mind of a young woman like Ollie can be amid wayward hormones and an assault on her senses because of the smells.

— The reviewer is a writer based in Noida