'The Body In The Back Seat'

Book: The Body In The Back Seat
Author: Salil Desai
Gyaana Books
254 pages
Rs250

Though Indian writing in English has gone from strength to strength in the past decade, crime writing had always languished behind the typical ‘Indian novel’.

But in the last few years, a slew of crime writers have surfaced, churning out Indianised mysteries by the bagful, even though the quality is not always consistent.

Salil Desai joins this group with his debut Body In The Back Seat, a murder mystery set in Pune. The eponymous body is that of a small-time businessman, whose death could have benefited almost anyone around him. His marriage was crumbling, he had a property dispute with his brother, and he had discovered that his business partner was cheating him.

Enter senior inspector Saralkar and his dour deputy Motkar. The two cops start with what looks like a suicide and end up with a cold-blooded murder by using their intuition and piecing together little nuggets of evidence along the way.

The story-telling is simple and neat, and the book is a real page turner, though the prose does get clunky at times. The book holds your attention, at least till it enters the last third, where it falls flat. This is even more disappointing considering that it manages to draw the reader into the mystery quite well in the first two-thirds.

The problem lies in the motive behind the murder and how the investigators nail it. Because of the way it is introduced, it leaves the reader with little doubt about what it could be. From there, the reader can put two and two together and there is no suspense as the book lumbers to its denouement.

So, as purely a crime novel, Desai’s debut may not exactly set the Mula and the Mutha on fire, but where it scores is as an original Indian police procedural and in its setting — Pune. It is a good procedural because this is exactly how the police in India work, and it is a good Pune book because this is exactly how people in Pune speak. The humour is totally Puneri — a deadly mix of dry, sarcastic and borderline offensive.

Through the course of the book, Saralkar and Motkar interact with a lot of people who they see primarily as murder suspects, and hence, who they think are beneath them. Desai uses this as a perfect tool to dish out some acerbic, yet funny, lines. Motkar’s struggle to try and teach his son basic mathematics also makes for some lighthearted distraction.  

In all, Saralkar and Motkar may not exactly be New India’s answer to Holmes and Watson, but they definitely have the potential to become a memorable crime-busting duo if Desai can tie up some loose ends of his own.