Review of City of Death by Abheek Barua
The latest entrant to the world of Indian detectives, Sohini Sen, is an alcoholic, world-weary cop, in pursuit of a psychopath
Unlike in Greek tragedy where they inevitably lead to a spectacular downfall, flaws maketh a hero in crime fiction. Any brilliant modern detective worth his salt has to be damaged in ways more than one: alcoholism, depression, reclusiveness, eccentricity, dysfunctional relationships, and so on. Think Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus, or Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole or JK Rowling’s ex-soldier with one leg and numerous emotional scars, Cormoran Strike.
The reader gets invested in the plot then not just to find out how evil let loose in society is going to be contained, but, just as much, to see how the broken protagonist in question is going to get out of bed to fight the demons, personal and otherwise.
Abheek Barua’s Kolkata cop, Sohini Sen, is cast in the familiar mould of the typical loner of this genre intent on drinking herself into an early grave. To be fair, she is more proactive than other dipsomaniac detectives. For when we meet her — after having witnessed the beheading of a young woman in the opening pages — the pill-popping, vodka-guzzling, Sen, in her late forties, is meticulously planning her suicide that she hopes to execute in “picture-postcard pretty” Goa.
Once tipped to become the “youngest deputy commissioner” to head the city’s police force, Sen had run afoul of a real estate shark with friends in high places. As a result, she found herself relegated to the margins (put in charge of civil defence) and forgotten.
However, when the victim of the aforementioned killing turns out to be the only daughter of a business tycoon, Sen is brought back to the crime branch and pitch-forked into the middle of the action.
The Ahona Chatterjee murder then becomes Sohini’s one chance to fix her life and prove herself. That it won’t be easy is a given. For it is not just the psychopath at large that she has to deal with, but a vicious media running a smear campaign against the “junkie alcoholic” cop, and repeated attempts to sabotage the investigation from both her department and the Chatterjee clan. While this counter-productive brouhaha derails the probe, another beheading takes place.
The book is well written, the story nicely plotted and told entirely in the present tense. Keeping that up must have been difficult and could have been tiring to read over 263 pages, but Barua is up to the task. Except for some instances, where the tense causes confusion about the chronology of events, it does not, largely, impinge on the flow or pace of the narrative. City of Death plants itself in the tradition of Scandinavian noir not just because of the damaged detective trope, but for the social criticism it contains (directed at the “Darwinian world” of the media, corruption in the political system, female sexual abuse and foeticide).
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The antagonist to Barua’s resilient protagonist is just as well-etched out and convincing. The depiction of the killer’s psyche (and the reader is frequently taken into the mind of the murderer) is among the highlights of the book.
In a lookist culture where even female super heros must be sexed up to sell, it is refreshing to have a woman investigator who is attractive not because she is young or beautiful (Sen is neither), but for her smarts. Her major feat in her debut adventure though is survival. Despite her alcohol-ravaged mind and body, the black dog on her shoulder, the press mud-slinging, bureaucratic red tape and the impossible odds.
Barua’s world-weary cop joins the ranks of other Indian female detectives of various hues in English-language fiction (there is Kalpana Swaminathan’s stylish, retired cop-turned-PI in her sixties, Lalli; Ashok Banker’s vengeance-seeking Sheila Ray; Madhumita Bhattacharya’s private eye-cum-food writer Reema Ray; Swati Kaushal’s glamourous Shimla cop Niki Marwah), who can all hold the story well on their own.
One looks forward to more Sohini Sen adventures where both the police detective and her creator can realise their full potential.