Harini Nagendra is Director of Research at the Azim Premji University and leads the University’s Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability. She has authored several scientific publications and books on the planet and its ecosystems. The Bangalore Detectives Club is her first foray into fiction.
A murder mystery featuring a 19-year-old protagonist, the book is based in Bangalore in the 1920s. Young, beautiful, upper-class wife of a doctor, Kaveri the protagonist, could well be the heroine of a young adult book of fiction, which is almost what TBDC is. In a world of beautiful old Bangalore, cosy parties, heart-warming friendships, a charming policeman and a loving and caring husband, Kaveri’s eagerness to solve a murder takes wing. Everything is just a shade less than real—even the murders are neither gory nor scary, and no antagonist can reach Kaveri for the greater part of the book. Like a children’s version of an Agatha Christie.
The book scores on several fronts, however. The protagonist’s childlike simplicity, which calls to everyone’s protective instincts, and the images of old Bangalore, a bygone era of peace and tranquillity, shielded from the raging storm of the freedom movement. The descriptions are what I liked best—details of the food and its serving, the clothes, the vegetation, the rituals and practices, dos and don’ts, the narrow lanes of the Halasur cowherd village and the slapping of cow dung cakes on rocks for example.
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