With over a decade on the Mumbai crime beat, journalist Mohamed Thaver has dealt with oddballs, petty thieves, hardened criminals and unintentionally funny policemen. That he has trudged his way through the subterranean mayhem unique to the city and mingled with a diverse section of the ragtag and bobtail, become abundantly clear by the time we get to the endnote telling us how these experiences have fuelled his maiden novel.
Reading time may not be a typical metric to measure a book’s worth, but it seems like a good barometer to me. Especially since I have been binging on Agatha Christie, Jo Nesbø, Dick Francis and slow-burning Stephen King horrors through the lockdown to keep the gloom and doom at bay. From kicking off In Plain Sight and getting to the aforementioned brief about the author’s inspirations, with 255 pages in between, just about 36 hours elapsed. Thaver clearly knows how to reel you in with a gripping yarn.
The plot revolves around a series of gruesome rapes and murders by an innocuous deviant, but the book doesn’t dwell too much on the grotesque crimes. Instead, it comes across as a cool and pacy police procedural with a ringside view of modern newsrooms — complete with Whatsapp groups and tricky digital biometric attendance apps.
Told initially through a rookie crime reporter coming to grips with the half-truths and perfidies of Mumbai’s underbelly that cover up the apparent sophistication of the well-heeled, the narrative doesn’t lose an iota of momentum when the focus shifts to an above-it-all, recalcitrant police sleuth who yearns to return to the simple life of a Maharashtrian village.
But first, the police officer must unravel a trail of crimes with no witnesses, and clues that could fit on the back of a postage stamp, with the turn of events almost destroying his assured demeanour. The reporter comes of age, but not before delighting us with the strategy of how he plans his daily culinary escapades in accordance with the police stations dealing with his next crime assignment. Thaver needs to write more, and fast.
In Plain Sight; Mohamed Thaver, HarperCollins, ₹399
vikas.dhoot@thehindu.co.in
