It was difficult for me to imagine mystery stories for younger readers. Having grown up on Enid Blyton and Father Brown in childhood, Pavithra Sankaran’s attempts at bringing the taste of suspense and mystery to the younger lot came as a pleasant surprise.
The book has three stories—‘The Tic-Tic-Tic Trouble’, ‘The Mayamix Mess’ and ‘The Payasam Puzzle’. Each one has Mira at the helm of affairs—solving strange neighbourhood mysteries with her cleverness and curiosity.
‘The Tic-Tic-Tic Trouble’ stands out among the three. It is set in an ordinary neighbourhood where Mira the detective lives. It starts with the mysterious disappearance of a gold watch from Mira’s mother’s antiques shop. The watch was part of the family legacy and was kept extra safe in the shop that was located in the same neighbourhood. The police come in, the CCTV footage is scanned, but it is Mira, with an eye for detail, who eventually follows the colour purple to figure out the robber and reconstruct the robbery scene. The book will prove to be a gripping read for those starting on mystery stories, although for the avid mystery story lovers, the cat peeps out of the bag before it is time.
‘The Mayamix Mess’ touches upon a touchy subject—milk—one that is often the cause of many a battle between children and their parents! It also raises issues of adulteration, addiction and so on—but lightly. Sankaran’s insights into how children think and feel, the excuses they make, their tactics to get rid of things they dislike, the little details of the workings of a child’s mind are impressive. However, when it comes to solving the mystery, the agency is shifted from detective Mira to her friend Sunil’s Uncle Tambi and her mother’s lawyer friend Sheila Aunty. Detective Mira finds a clue, follows it, unravels part of it—but then the rest of it becomes mere passive listening to these adults. This shifting of agency when carrying out the most important task in the story—solving the mystery—from the child protagonist to adult characters left me with a sense of, ‘Oh, why?’.
‘The Payasam Puzzle’, is a bit of a far cry – with a loving payasam cooking lady being kidnapped to restore the name and fame of a hotel whose business was declining. The story starts and builds well, but in the end, the resolution of the mystery leaves the reader waiting for more depth and craft.
Yet, all in all, the stories do give a sense of how a detective works—the keen eye for observation, the kind of simple questions to be asked, the perseverance needed to follow your nose—skills that a detective needs. The illustrations in the book by Vandana Singh are crazily imaginative. I especially loved those images that broke the typical perspective grid (see page 14 and page 38 for example), where Vandana seems to have done the ‘Picasso’ act of ‘drawing like a child’!
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