Madhumita Bhattacharya wanted to set each of her Reema Ray mysteries in a different city. So the first book, The Masala Murder was in Calcutta, the second, Dead in a Mumbai Minute (Pan Macmillan) is set in Mumbai and the third will be set in Goa. Any chance of Reema solving a murky murder in town? “I would never say never,” Madhumita says with a laugh.
Mumbai Minute is a breezy read and finds Reema involved in the murder of Ashutosh Dhingre, former assistant to Bollywood’s biggest star, Kimaaya. In the mix are starlets, highly-paid escorts, drugs, terrorism and of course Reema’s dishy boss, the mysterious Shayak Gupta. That the murder is committed on a private island places it firmly in closed door mystery genre.
“It follows the ‘cosy’ style. They are character and not forensic or violence led.” A huge fan of Agatha Christie, Madhumita says she also loves “Holmes, but then, who doesn’t? Especially after Benedict Cumberbatch has made him so extremely sexy. I really liked Rowling’s The Cuckoo’s Calling and hope there are more coming. Alexander McCall Smith, Patricia Cornwell, Sue Grafton, Kathy Reichs, Ruth Rendell are all on my bookshelf and I like some of their work more than others.
The author has travelled all over the world from a childhood in “New Jersey and Virginia,” to growing up in Calcutta, going off to “Shanghai, then Delhi, Gurgaon and Bangalore since 2012. I wrote Masala Murder in Shanghai. The book was originally set there but my publisher asked for it to be set in India and I transplanted the story to Calcutta.”
Talking of the genesis of Reema Ray, the 20-something investigator, Madhumita candidly comments, “I wanted to write a book that was accessible, that would be published.” To the comment that commercial fiction can never be literature, Madhumita retorts, “It might not be literature, but that doesn’t stop it from being great reading. If it can bring countless people joy, does it matter if it is not ‘literature’? I, for one, am not overly bothered by such labels. And of course, not all crime novels fit into the mould of the genre and can be ‘literary’ as anything else.”
Though plot is paramount in a mystery, the author who lives in Cooke Town insists, “For me characters come first and then the plot. I decided the protagonist would be a woman because it was in first person and at this stage of my writing I don’t think I could get into a man’s skin. I am going to write a crime thriller with a male protagonist. It will be in the third person because it is easier to withhold information that way.”
While Madhumita like Reema is a food writer and enjoys baking, she insists “In no way is Reema me.” Ask the former journalist (she worked for The Telegraph for a decade) why so many scribes are turning into authors and she comments, “Maybe we like telling a story. Maybe telling others’ stories fills us with the urge to create a narrative that our fleeting glimpses of people's lives as journalists do not allow.”
The 34-year-old describes Shanghai as edgy, Mumbai and Goa as places “where anything could happen,” she describes Bangalore as “home, for now! I enjoy the pace of the city — not so fast as to make your head spin, yet just fast enough to keep you curious.”
On the many women crime busters in Indian writing in English today Madhumita grins saying, “Why not? It is time girls had some fun.”
The Masala Murder could be read independently, Mumbai Minute ends with a sort of cliff-hanger.
“I wanted this book to stand alone, and yet create the foundation for the next book.
I envisioned the Reema story in three parts, and building suspense is never a bad thing. At the level of character, one of the most important lessons Reema learns as she cuts her teeth is that nothing is as simple as it seems.
The truth is a many-layered pastry, and the filling is not always sweet.”
Describing her regular work day, the young mom says: “My current style is to work when my daughter is sleeping, when my husband is home to watch her, when I can escape to a cafe on the weekend, when I can hide in another room while she plays. In short, it is guerrilla warfare. I often set word counts for myself, and I never stick to them. I used to be able to write 3000 words a day without breaking a sweat. Now if I can manage 500 I consider myself lucky.”
Describing Reemaas not a tech wizard, Madhumita hastens to clarify “she is by no means a luddite. One of the major clues she unravels that leads to the resolution of the mystery involves cutting-edge technology.
But novels that are all about technology are not of interest to me, and nothing kills a good plot like cellphones!”
