The Imperfect Layout To The Imperfect Mystery

Jane De Suza’s ‘The Spy Who Lost Her Head’ doesn’t feature a protagonist with superhuman skills of deduction, nor a plot that fits together like a jigsaw puzzle. Here, quirks and imperfections are pushed into the spotlight

- Poonam Ganglani

When I first reached out to Jane De Suza for some insights into her debut novel The Spy Who Lost Her Head, she asked me, curiously, ‘What about the book caught the attention of a magazine on art?’

For starters, there’s the topsy-turvy world on the cover, with flipped ‘S’s and ‘P’s in the title, and the bizarre image of a flashy female detective with a box in the place of her head. At the beginning of the novel, our heroine is mysteriously missing. And when she confides in us about her predicament, dealing with unsuitable suitors in the village of Gayab where she’s from, she does it in her own colourful version of the ‘Queen’s English’:

They is getting for me one made-in-heaven proposal after another. You see, my Papaji is Lord. He is Lord of many lands. He is having lots money and he is buying anything he wants. He is buying husbands for me, like other mans is buying onions. At bargain price. But I am shake my head at all. ‘This one is playing with his toes’, ‘that one is dig his nose’, ‘that one is spit when he is talk’, ‘and that one is duck-walk!’

Unlike other detective stories I’ve read, this one didn’t feature a protagonist with superhuman skills of deduction, nor a plot that fits together like a jigsaw puzzle. Quite refreshingly, quirks and imperfections were pushed into the spotlight. Clearly, an original experience of the crime novel was in store.

Newly arrived in Mumbai with fourteen suitcases in tow, Gulabi is determined to find herself a ‘Bemba’ in the big city (