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Half–a–corona. Long before ‘corona’ created mayhem across the world, Keralites were used to this phrase… ‘half-a-corona’. This phrase conjured images of a dashing sleuth—with a lighted half-a-corona cigar…the image of Detective Marksin created by ace novelist Kottayam Pushpanath. From the late sixties until his death in 2018, Pushpanath was the last word in popular detective fiction in Malayalam.Detective novels in Malayalam or Apasarpaka Kathakal as they are known are heavily indebted to Sherlock Holmes. The early creations were influenced by Holmes’s novels. Kunthalatha—the first novel in Malayalam (Appu Nedungadi—1887), though had elements of Apasarpaka in it, however, is not considered as a pure detective novel. The first attempts in this realm of writing were by OM Cheriyan and Appan Thamburan. OM Cherian’s Mister Kailey started as a series in a magazine in October 1899…

In 1911, when the British colonial government announced its decision to move the imperial capital of British India to Delhi, many received the news as a restoration of the city’s place in its natural, political location. After all, the name of ‘Dilli’ had been synonymous with the rise and fall of successive dynasties in the subcontinent. The city seemed to exert a divine will of its own; punishing menacingly, as it did with Muhammad bin Tughlaq, those who did not submit to its ordained status. In its more recent history, the city came to manifest the imperial or modernist grandeur of the likes of Shah Jahan, Herbert Baker and Edwin Lutyens and even, Jawaharlal Nehru. It is for these reasons that the conglomerate of settlements that goes by the name of Delhi, often seems to invoke a narrative of extraordinary greatness especially in its past…

With Midnight at Malabar House, British crime writer Vaseem Khan started a new detective series. This series is set in the early years of Independence and the protagonist is India’s first female IPS, Persis Wadia. The first book in the series is set in 1949. The backdrop is Indian Independence and the painful Partition.The city of Bombay is in the midst of New Year’s Celebration, Persis Wadia is at her office at Malabar House. Sometime after midnight, Persis gets a call. One Madan Lal asks her to come over to the house of British diplomat James Herriot. On reaching there, Wadia discovers that the British diplomat has been murdered. One peculiar fact about the murder scene was the diplomat’s missing trousers. And all this happened while there was a party taking place at the house. Wadia also detected the possibility of theft…

Umadathan’s work Oru Police Surgeonnte Ormakurippukal has been a best seller in its original Malayalam since it was first published in 2010. Umadathan wore many hats during his life. He served as a Professor of forensic medicine, he was a police surgeon, a medico-legal adviser to Kerala Police, the Principal of Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, and Director of Medical Studies, Government of Kerala, just to name a few. He is widely credited with introducing the word ‘forensic’ in Malayalam, and using his medico-investigative skills to give a direction and conclusion to cases that would otherwise have seen a different conclusion…

12 January 1925That Monday evening, Abdul Kader Bawla, a businessman and corporator in the Bombay Municipal Corporation, decided to go on a drive with his mistress Mumtaz Begum.In the morning, Bawla was at his office at Chach Mohalla near Masjid Bunder. Later he met with some acquaintances and relatives before visiting the civic body’s office to attend a meeting and then proceeded to his sea-facing residence near Chowpatty…

Nev March’s debut fiction opens in late nineteenth century Bombay, one of the most important and unforgettable cities dotting the British empire. With the Sepoy Mutiny a thing of the past and the law-and-order situation at its efficient best, thanks to India being directly governed by the Crown now, Bombay seems to be in a state of quiet and calm. However, that is not quite the case as March’s 400 pages long crime novel tells us. Bombay, as we shall see, continues (as was the case during the time of the East India Company) to be home to (unsolved) crimes and violence, undetected conspiracies, mistaken and unsound prosecutions, wrongful confinements, faulty justice, erroneous (media) and damaging reportage, and many more of such typical urban maladies…