Murder in Seven Acts: Lalli Mysteries, released February 2018
Lalli, retired policewoman, intrepid detective, collects curiosities… that inevitably lead to murder.
The curiosity of murder unfolds in seven acts.
Since Kalpana Swaminathan’s first whodunit was published over ten years ago, Lalli—sixty and silver-haired and tough as nails—has been one of the most memorable detectives in Indian fiction. Lalli returns in this brilliant page-turner, a collection of seven stories, to solve some of the strangest, most complex cases of her career.
The opening act, in which a face keeps reappearing until a crime committed long ago is revealed, is followed by a murder that could be hypothetical—or a reality (Lalli turns to Schrodinger’s Cat to find out). In the third act in this unfolding drama, Lalli and Sita are invited to a book-burning which turns out to be murder most foul. And Lalli turns her skills to the world of high fashion when Sita sits next to a serial killer on a bus—but was he killer or victim?
The aptly named Suicide Point in Bombay’s suburbs, leads Lalli to a suicide that turns out to be something far more sinister. And an innocuous desk ornament is the clue to a crime most artistically executed. Finally, for connoisseurs of fiction, the curtains come down with a threnody for lost love.
Review
‘The novel is a sheer delight for anyone who likes to read thriller novels.’— The Millennium Post
‘[A] good offering from a seasoned hand!’—The Tribune
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty: that is this crime novelist’s Holy Grail. It is created not least through Swaminathan’s wry, elegant language. Not a whit of flab on those sentences, but endless surprises. She is undoubtedly one of the finest Indian writers of English.’ —The Indian Express
Review
‘The reason that Swaminathan should be read – and is enjoyed by so many – is the sheer delight of her writing. She manages to oscillate between ironic, playful, lyrical and macabre with equal ease.’—Anita Roy in India Today ‘[The Lalli mysteries] are memorable for their characters, dark comic undertones and liberal extension of the traditionally male detective horizons…a breath of fresh air in a genre that is generally known by the stagnant whiff of the crypt.’—Asian Age
The curiosity of murder unfolds in seven acts.
Since Kalpana Swaminathan’s first whodunit was published over ten years ago, Lalli—sixty and silver-haired and tough as nails—has been one of the most memorable detectives in Indian fiction. Lalli returns in this brilliant page-turner, a collection of seven stories, to solve some of the strangest, most complex cases of her career.
The opening act, in which a face keeps reappearing until a crime committed long ago is revealed, is followed by a murder that could be hypothetical—or a reality (Lalli turns to Schrodinger’s Cat to find out). In the third act in this unfolding drama, Lalli and Sita are invited to a book-burning which turns out to be murder most foul. And Lalli turns her skills to the world of high fashion when Sita sits next to a serial killer on a bus—but was he killer or victim?
The aptly named Suicide Point in Bombay’s suburbs, leads Lalli to a suicide that turns out to be something far more sinister. And an innocuous desk ornament is the clue to a crime most artistically executed. Finally, for connoisseurs of fiction, the curtains come down with a threnody for lost love.
Review
‘The novel is a sheer delight for anyone who likes to read thriller novels.’— The Millennium Post
‘[A] good offering from a seasoned hand!’—The Tribune
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty: that is this crime novelist’s Holy Grail. It is created not least through Swaminathan’s wry, elegant language. Not a whit of flab on those sentences, but endless surprises. She is undoubtedly one of the finest Indian writers of English.’ —The Indian Express
Review
‘The reason that Swaminathan should be read – and is enjoyed by so many – is the sheer delight of her writing. She manages to oscillate between ironic, playful, lyrical and macabre with equal ease.’—Anita Roy in India Today ‘[The Lalli mysteries] are memorable for their characters, dark comic undertones and liberal extension of the traditionally male detective horizons…a breath of fresh air in a genre that is generally known by the stagnant whiff of the crypt.’—Asian Age
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