Book review: 'The Eighth Guest...'

Book: The Eighth Guest And Other MuzaffarJang Mysteries
Madhulika Liddle
Hachette
284 pages
Rs350

Muzaffar Jang is an aristocrat in Mughal emperor Shah Jahan’s Dilli. He is an unlikely nobleman, with boatmen for friends, and an accidental detective, with a knack for solving all manner of mystery.

This is author Madhulika Liddle’s second outing with Muzaffar — the dashing young maverick nobleman made his first appearance in The Englishman’s Cameo, a novel in which he solves a murder and exonerates a friend of the crime.

In The Eighth Guest And Other Muzaffar Jang Mysteries, we meet Muzaffar just days after this. Given his recent success, Muzaffar’s brother-in-law, the Kotwal of Dilli, enlists his help in solving what appears to be a theft and a murder, but one which has left no corpse. And so Muzaffar is once more drawn into a series of mysteries, sometimes with intent and sometimes not, that take him all over the streets of 1656 Delhi.

The Eighth Guest... is in that genre of mystery story collections made famous by Agatha Christie and her Hercule Poirot — or closer home, by Satyajit Ray’s Feluda — with an unconventional central character, called into extraordinary situations, always one step ahead of everyone else because he sees things that others don’t. In this instance, Muzaffar is also an insider who gives us a glimpse of history.

Except that he doesn’t really. For the most part, the fact that these stories are set in a Mughal court doesn’t seem to matter, except to serve as a tool for having mysteries unfold in the royal elephant stables or at the imperial atelier or on a caravan serai’s journey. It doesn’t, however, give us an insight into the real lives of people or the politics or culture of the time. This isn’t essential, but would’ve added a welcome dimension to the mysteries and puzzles, which, although curious, never become intriguing.

Strangely, the biggest mystery of the book is Muzaffar himself. Yes, he’s young, handsome and eccentric, but beyond this, we don’t get a sense of his character through his actions or words, with the result that he — and the reader — feels like an outsider throughout.

It’s encouraging to read homespun stories in a genre that has seen few Indian takers but here’s hoping the author pushes boundaries a bit more the next time around.