Missing in action

When I sat down to read this book I was excited and also a little proud, in the typical Bengali way, to see the word “Bengali” on the cover of a book written by a Bengali author. Also, this was a book about crime detectives, so it offered a nice break from mundane life and a good opportunity to soak up some real action.

The first couple of chapters of the book were enthralling, allowing me a vicarious journey through the lanes and bylanes of Kolkata, to buy fish from Lake Market, sip Darjeeling tea, travel by tram and have an adda (a freewheeling conversation) in a quintessential para (locality). I thoroughly enjoyed all this, but could not wait for the actual crime to be committed and the suspense of a good detective novel to begin.

Unfortunately my hunger was fed only in the fourth chapter, by which time I was quite tired of reading about the daily life of a Bengali in Kolkata. That theme was becoming overdone, with clichéd references to moshai and babu (two different ways of saying “Sir”) and cultural icons like Rabindranath Tagore, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Sarat Chandra and Bankim Chandra. Even so, as a loyal Bengali it would be wrong for me to say that I did not enjoy any of this at all.

So, at long last, here we are in Chapter Four, sitting inside the swish bungalow of a rich Mr Agarwal whose diamond ring has been stolen. The plot begins to thicken.

Alas. Nothing much happens after this. What follows is more of the para problem, the regular adda sessions and preparations for the upcoming Durga Pujo. By now I had shed all my Bengali pride and was praying for the culprit to be nabbed.

My prayer was answered in the second-last chapter of this 19-chapter, 180-page book that so desperately tries to draw inspiration from Satyajit Ray’s Feluda or from Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay’s Byomkesh Bakshi. Sadly, The All Bengali Crime Detectives fails from all angles. While wading through the pages of unnecessary rhetoric and irrelevant anecdotes — including descriptions of wives who have nothing to do with the plot, beyond being relentless nags — any smart reader will be able to guess who has stolen the ring.

While Chatterjee is able to create real-life characters, she loses touch with period and time. The book is obviously not written for an era in which we use mobile phones for everything. The characters in her book are still using letters and landlines.

This book reads like a screenplay for a commercial film rather than a crime novel. In the latter, every bit of the action ought to be connected to the crime, so that the reader is mobilised to try and identify the culprit. What’s more, this book will not be enjoyed in the slightest by those who are not Bengali, or those who have no experience of everyday life in Kolkata and its romance.

THE ALL BENGALI CRIME DETECTIVES
Author: Suparna Chatterjee
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 192
Price: Rs 150