The adventures of Wyndham and Surrender-not

First, there was history. Then came the books about it, by historians to begin with but later by politicians and other charlatans as well. 

Then with the coming of modern readers markets came historical romance novels. They have had a lot of success in the West but haven’t caught on in India as a genre. 

Then, much later, came the historical crime novels. Most of the ones I have read were situated in England and were by British writers. They were entirely forgettable.

Of late Americans, too, have been writing these. But these also don’t amount to much, being very formulaic. Many seem to be written by persons who have taken courses in writing.

But a few years ago, most pleasingly as it has turned out, have come the historical crime novels situated in India. What’s more, these are by writers of Indian origin which gives them that little feel or empathy about the people they are writing about. 

The first such I discovered, and wrote about last year, was by Sujata Massey who has created a female Parsi lawyer character working in the first quarter of the 20th century in Bombay, as it was then. 

Her name is Perveen Mistry. She solves murder mysteries. They are wonderfully written, in a calm and polished style. However, Massey is best known for the Japanese female puzzle and mystery solver, Rei Shimura.

A new writer

Now thanks to my friend of 53 years, Arun Kakar, I have been introduced to another such writer, Abir Mukherjee. Arun is like the ghost who walks. He is a businessman who reads. 

I have read only one book by Abir Mukherjee, and am looking forward to reading the other three when it becomes possible to buy them when this “China-virus thing” is over.

Be warned, though. There is another novel writer of the same name who writes entirely a different sort of novel. 

It’s not unlike my cousin and I who have very similar names and identical initials. But he writes books which show that history must be taken seriously. I write on modern economics with the disdain it deserves.

The new genre

Anyway, the Abir I am talking about grew up in Scotland. He has created a dogged English character called Sam Wyndham of the Imperial Police. 

Wyndham has many weaknesses, reminiscent of Inspector Morse by Colin Dexter. If Morse was addicted 

to whiskey, Wyndham has a Holmesian preference for opium, the purer the better because it doesn’t give hangovers. 

He has a sidekick who — unlike Holmes’s slightly dense Watson or Morse’s long-suffering wingman, Lewis — is  a young Cambridge-educated Bengali called Surendranath. In a little dig at their pronunciation of Jagannath, who became Juggernaut, Mukherjee makes the Brits call him Surrender-not. 

The surname is Bannerji. For those who don’t know, and I am sure most don’t, there is another Surendranath Bannerji in Indian history, an important politician of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Mr Mukherjee writes in that polished way where not a word is out of place, not a sentence superfluous. This is no Edgar Wallace typing off a novel over a weekend in a rural inn.

This is hard work of a different kind, almost like writing an intricate musical core. That makes his books what are called page-turners. You want to find out who did it but you don’t flip through the pages to the end. 

Mr Mukherjee, who has won several awards, writes in a way that makes you read page by page even when you are reaching the end. That’s a rare quality amongst mystery writers.

Nor does he waste many words describing colonial India in great detail or lament its racial inequities as self-conscious Brits can tend to do. He accepts that India as it was then —gora boss, kala naukar . Some goras  are fine, just as some naukars  are, too.

So Wyndham is a good boss who orders Surrender-not about but only as a police professional. It’s all done very nicely. He also respects his junior’s views.

The plots are intricately woven but with a very light touch. So you never get that sense of oppression that some mystery writers impart.

That said these books — Massey, Mukherjee etc —don’t seem to be written for an Indian audience. They are intended, I think, for a predominantly English readership that likes to think of India in a certain way.  Never mind. These writers have created a new genre. That, by itself, is a good enough reason to read them.