Fishy Business and Family Feuds

This murder mystery of quirky characters blends Bengali gothic literature with sharp humour and sly feminism

- By SHEILA KUMAR

A skeleton at the foot of a magnificent banyan tree, known to the family as Le Patriarche.

A cigar-smoking matriarch called Fishy, and a family feud so hilarious, it could only unfold in a mansion in Kolkata. Hemangini Dutt Majumder’s The Scratch and Sniff Chronicles takes the old trope of Bengali Gothic literature, contemporises it, and serves up a whodunnit that is some parts funny, some parts macabre, and all parts engaging.

We are dropped without ceremony into the lives of the Chaterges (yes, this is the spelling). At the centre is Basanti—fondly called Fishy by her adopted daughter Ellora/Laura and her orphaned niece Olympia/ Ollie, named after a Manet painting, Fishy belongs to an old, wealthy family that owns a mansion in Chandan Nagar outside Kolkata. She is locked ina property battle with her widowed stepmother, the larger-than-life Labanga Latika, and no fond nicknames here, thank you very much.