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Bollywood Comes to Crime FictionFebruary 27, 2009 "Jai-ho!" I have been humming that jaunty Oscar-winning song from Slumdog Millionaire all week in the office; if you want to hear an English-language version of "You are My Destiny", Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls has kindly laid down a track for you to sample. Interestingly as Bollywood and Hollywood converged at last week's Academy Awards, I received two Indian mystery galleys that may garner reader attention, thanks to Slumdog's victory. Meet Vish Puri, a middle-aged Punjabi family man who as India's "most private investigator" runs background checks on prospective brides and grooms for arranged marriages. He is the hero of British journalist Tarquin Hall's The Case of the Missing Servant (Simon & Schuster, June 2009), the first title in a debut mystery series set in Delhi, which the galley's promotional material describes as combining "the provincial charm" of Alexander McCall Smith's Precious Ramotswe series with a story that "delivers an insider's view of contemporary India reminiscent in its scope and insight.of Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games." That's a bit of a heavy burden for first novel to bear, but as a frequent diner at the all-you-can-eat Indian buffets in my Curry Hill neighborhood, I did like that the mystery opens with Vish "devouring a dozen green chile pakoras from a greasy takeout box" against his doctor's orders. Plus his undercover operatives have colorful nicknames like Tubelight, Flush, and Facecream. Coming in August from Akashic Books is the much darker and grittier Delhi Noir, the latest entry in Akashic's popular noir anthology series. Edited by Hirsh Sawhney, the volume features 14 original tales by both Booker short-listed and upcoming Indian writers (Irwin Alleyn Sealy, Omair Ahmad, Meera Nair) that explore Delhi's "undercomfortable underside": corruption and contract killings, prostitution rings, rape and sexual assault, class divisions that lead to murder. "Good crime fiction, however seductive and pleasurable, forces readers to reckon with the inequality and cruelty inherent to modern societies," notes Sawhney in his introduction. Posted by Wilda Williams on February 27, 2009 | Comments (0)
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