In the US, disgraced Indian army officer Ranjit Singh is in a race against time to save his family, while battling his own demons from the past. In cyclone-hit Milwaukee, the time is ripe for the murder of Indian techies by an American serial killer. In Shillong, a guitar player has to shell out Rs 50 lakh to save the life of his brother, involved in a botched up arms deal.

These are, in a gist, the plots of three crime fiction novels, The Caretaker, Behind the Silicon Mask and The Girl from Nongrim Hills, which hit Indian bookstores late last year. Besides being engaging, they are also refreshingly Indian. In The Caretaker, a novel primarily written for an American audience, a plate of dal khitchri even makes an appearance.

The interest in writing and reading Indian crime fiction is probably as old as detectives Feluda and Byomkesh Bakshi. Yet, the genre never really took off. Ankush Saikia, author of The Girl from Nongrim Hills, opines that for some reason, India seldom had well-written crime fiction. “But it looks like its starting to change,” adds the author, who is now writing a crime novel set in Delhi.


Ankush Saikia believes Indian crime fiction is turning the corner

With good quality thrillers and crime novels lined up for release this year, publishing honchos and authors are hopeful that crime writing in India will finally find its voice.

Talent hunt
It is a great time to be a crime fiction fan and writer. HarperCollins Publishers India is working to bring better quality crime fiction to readers, by putting together a series of thrillers by Indian writers. So this year, Anita Nair’s Old Monk-sipping, Bullet-riding Inspector Gowda (seen in Nair’s Cut like a Wound) will be back, embroiled in another mystery. Medical thriller The Death of Mitali Dotto, by Anirban Bose, will also be out this year. Besides Kota Neelima’s crime fiction novel, The Honest Season, Random House India is also releasing a novel co-authored by James Patterson and Ashwin Sanghi called Private India, which is one of the existing series of Private novels by Patterson.