So many books, so little time. Now, we read the most important books on your behalf so that you don’t have to. Just read our Reader’s Die Jest instead. It’ll take only a few minutes, longer if you’re sending WhatsApp messages in between.

We start with Private India by Ashwin Sanghi and James Patterson, which celebrates the festival season without blood.

The first body is found first. She’s a doctor from Thailand, and she’s been murdered in Mumbai, a city where the police force prefers to hand over homicide investigations to private investigators. Especially when they’re actually named Private. And when the head of the Indian branch of the MNC is a genius and a drunkard. And more so when, as we’ll know later, the policeman taking the decision was sleeping with the dipso’s wife before the maniac ran his car into a tree, killing her and their son. But not, cunningly, himself, because otherwise how would his rival in love almost kill him at a Parsi Tower of Silence a few years later?

But first, more bodies have been found. And more clichés discovered. As the murderer says, making cameo appearances in several chapters, life is simply the absence of death. Also, more dialogue ripped off from Wikipedia comes to light. Next in the line of dead people are a journalist. A singer. A school principal. All women, naturally. Investigations proceed at full pace, but not before the intrepid staff of Private India pause to reflect on the biggest irony of life — that one woman’s hobby could be another woman’s hubby.

The body bags pile up. The police continue to let Private India conduct autopsies on the corpses. They only want to take the credit when the murderer is discovered. The said murderer has already appeared in the novel, and everyone except the characters in the book knows by now who the killer is. But there are more murders to be performed. Why? Because, stupid, it’s Navratri.

Santosh makes the breakthrough. Why are the victims being garrotted? Because the murderer is observing Navratra and is vegetarian at this time, hence unable to eat his victims. Now the penny drops, and Santosh realises that there will be nine murders in all, one for each avatar of Durga.

It’s also evident that the last of these victims will be his colleague Nisha, whose sex appeal is obvious but whose colleagues are rather well-bred. Especially, Jack Morgan, the global head of Private, who has chased his client-turned-lover, the actress-turned-director Lara Omprakash, to India, only to see her turning into one of the garrotte-artist’s victims. Overcome with grief, he does not respond to Nisha’s seductive charms and learns to play golf instead.

Meanwhile, an operative of Pakistan’s ISI is shopping for 30 kilograms of the explosive RDX. Mumbai is full of malls, though not as full as Delhi, but the silly terrorist decides instead to approach Munna, the biggest don of the city, who has been wondering when he will play a more prominent role in the book, because he’s been introduced but has only spent all his time in dance bars so far. Clearly Private India is the target, which we perceptive readers can tell but the brilliant Santosh cannot. He’s not drinking enough Johnny Walker.

Finally, eight murders down and one to go, Santosh & Co. wake up to the identity of the killer and nab him. A breathless finale ensues, involving not the murderer but the RDX (why buy 30 kg otherwise, dammit?), the chapters get shorter and shorter till the last one is down to just three sentences. It’s a sad ending, as only the murderer and the victims perish, and everyone else lives. Including Munna and the godman Nimboo Baba, whom we could not squeeze into this story earlier.

(This monthly columns allows you to talk about a book, without having to read it.)

arunava sinha translates classic and contemporary Bengali fiction and non-fiction into English @arunava

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