The Drowned Detective by Neil Jordan is genre-defying. The title makes one think that it is a police procedural, a detective from the local police force catching a murderer by focusing on the painstaking and repetitive day-to-day drudgery of police work. The detective here, however, is a private investigator, an English ex-serviceman called Jonathan who has come to a small Eastern European city because he was told about the opportunities opening up in former Soviet countries. He sets up, along with a colleague from that country, an agency to trace missing people and criminals.
The book’s first few pages are about a wayward minister who cheats on his wife. Jonathan and his colleagues are tracking his movements. It is easy to think this is Len Deighton territory, a minister from a poor country in the former Eastern bloc, a grim dark city, and a mistress who stays above a tyre repair shop. Jonathan wonders if the minister is severely compromising his security. So are spies going to emerge from unexpected quarters to blackmail indiscreet politicians?
You start thinking it is somewhat noir-ish, but before you know it, the story shifts gears. Jonathan goes to meet a psychic after tracing the minister and his mistress. That is when we learn about Jonathan, the jealous husband, a section where Jordan describes jealousy in wonderful prose. “I channel jealousy: I make it work for me, in a strange disembodied, objective way. I could be jealous of a passer-by if it made the instincts work, I could be jealous of a lapdog, I could be jealous of a gnat.”
Gertrude, the psychic, who looks like an ageing Marlene Dietrich, is helping Jonathan with his marital problems but she is also helping him find a girl called Petra, who has been missing for 20 years, a case that Jonathan has taken on despite his partner’s resistance because the girl, when she disappeared, was the same age as his daughter now. Petra’s parents go to Gertrude for help, as the mother has seen her in a dream. Gertrude tells them that Petra is somewhere in the city in a small room that she cannot leave.
Is the story about the missing girl? Is she in one of the brothels? Is she alive? Or is the book about Jonathan’s personal issues shrouded in mystery? Before we can figure any of this out, the narrative takes another turn, pretty surreal this time. When Jonathan is walking across the brown muddy river that divides the city, he stops on the bridge to look at one of the carved angels ‘with their immobile feathered stone wings that seemed designed to keep watch over those waters’.
He finds a young woman crouching by the foot of the angel, and she jumps into the river. He jumps after her, brings her out of the water, and follows her to where she lives and enters her strange dark, musical world. A recurring theme in the book is Bach’s cello concerts, which follow Jonathan everywhere.
Without spoiling the suspense, let’s just say the book is about Jonathan, his estranged archaeologist wife, Sarah, who has cheated on him, and his daughter, Jenny, who plays the violin and has imaginary friends, and many other interesting characters. Each one is etched sharply.
The city Jonathan has chosen to live in is in a state of decay. It is hot and humid. Jordan creates wonderful atmospherics. The mood swings from complete strangeness to the ordinary and mundane. At some point, it lets you think it is an esoteric ghost story.
Some passages are dark and creepy (in an enjoyable sort of way), some grey, and some actually fun. The surprises come when you least expect them. In the middle of the various mysteries, you suddenly find the police (in black balaclavas) and Pussy Riot-style protestors (in brightly coloured balaclavas) clashing. This sort of break happens constantly. The unnamed country has not yet shrugged off its Soviet totalitarian past. It makes you think that the book may finally turn out to be a political thriller.
Jordan is an award-winning writer and also a filmmaker, who has to his credit much-appreciated films such as Angel , Mona Lisa , The Miracle , The Crying Game and The Butcher Boy .
His visual sense comes through in his writing. He paints pictures with his prose. Describing the way to the psychic’s apartment, he writes: “The smell of the river was my guide through the warren of streets that surrounded it. It was the smell of old mud, ancient unresolved politics and very current sewage.”
The Drowned Detective is not a page-turner as crime fiction is supposed to be. Neither is it full of action with chases and bodies strewn all over. There is plenty of suspense and the unexpected keeps happening, but you turn the pages slowly, as you want to linger on the marvellous writing.
Sushila Ravindranath is a Chennai-based journalist.
