A Viagra-popping inspector meets his nemesis

Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari’s new novel is a sharp indictment of caste and gender politics in Kerala's society

- Somak Ghoshal

Kannanari's new novel unfolds as a police procedural.

(GETTY IMAGES)

Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari’s new novel, his second, unfolds as a police procedural, though an unusual one.

The Menon Investigation opens with an act of violent killing. In 2009, a 35-year-old sub-inspector, Kannan Moses, stepped out of his home near Kozhikode, in Kerala, for an early morning jog. Soon, the weather turned treacherous and the street lights went off without warning.

As the young officer moved towards the beach, four men drove up to him. One of them shot four rounds at him, missed his mark a couple of times in the rain-splashed darkness, but scored a hit eventually. Moses staggered on to the sand, but didn’t die instantly. So the others had to step in. Two men stabbed him, slashed his Achilles’ tendon with knives and, as Moses collapsed face down, one of them doused him with diesel and set him on fire.

The scene is clinically described, with every trace of titillation wiped out of it, and with the same cold control that Kannanari had demonstrated in his brilliant debut novel,