MURDER THEY WROTE

INDIAN CRIME FICTION IS HAVING A MOMENT, WITH A NOTABLE UPTICK IN BOTH QUALITY AND QUANTITY

- Illustration by NILANJAN DAS

Between November 3-5 last year, Dehradun played host to the 2nd Crime Literature Festival of India, three days of literary events and panel discussions centred around crime writing. In addition to writers of crime fiction, there were also Bollywood mainstays like the filmmaker Prakash Jha, journalist Sunetra Chowdhury (whose book on Tihar Jail was adapted into the Netflix series Black Warrant), folks involved in the Amazon Prime crime series Mirzapur, ete. The festival was a reminder of how crime fiction is dominating bookshelves across the country. In recent years, Indian crime fiction has seen a notable uptick in both quality and quantity. Even a cursory glance at the 'new releases' section at bookstores will tell you about the genre’s rude health in India.

Penguin Random House India, for example, has recently released Faiqa Mansab's The Sufi Storyteller, a work of crime fiction wherein an estranged mother-daughter duo must navigate a series of clues pertaining to Sufi poetry/music in order to solve the grisly murder of a young woman ata library. Picador/Pan Macmillan's recent offerings include Scarlet Sands by Udayan Mukherjee, the second novel featuring Neville Wadia, a private eye character who was once a Mumbai Police hero. Over at HarperCollins, another ex-cop private eye has started his innings—bestselling author Ashwin Sanghi's Razor Sharp is the first among an announced series featuring Prakash ‘Kutta’ Kadam, ex-cop turned private investigator.