When a former police officer tells you that your book has the perfect blend of lucid writing, well dispersed clues, tension and intrigue you know you are on the right track with your first mystery novel. And I guess Salil Desai, self proclaimed pathologically terrified author, must have heaved a sigh of relief as he listened to Mr. Jayant Umranikar, retired IPS officer, talk about his first crime novel, The Body in the Back Seat at its launch at Landmark (Pune) on Friday. Salil Desai, in fact, choose to describe all authors as pathologically terrified creatures who live in terror of failure at each stage of the creation of the book.
Salil Desai, the debutant novelist, is a film-maker and author whose writings have been published in various anthologies and magazines. The book is a murder mystery set in Pune where a body is found in the back seat of a car, and made to look like suicide. How the two police officers, Mr. Saralkar and Mr. Motkar resolve this case forms the crux of this 250 page book.
Speaking about the book, Mr. Umranikar said among the many good things about the book is the fact that the author stops at the resolution of the case and does not go into the trail phase which can get rather tedious. While Mr. Vinay Hardikar said that it is a book that restores your faith in the police force. Generally, crime novels portray the police as goofs or buffoons who cannot solve the mysteries by themselves and need the assistance of a third party detective, Hardikar said. In this book, the author portrays the police to be intelligent enough to decipher the clues and find the criminal.
Mr. Hardikar also praised Salil Desai for his attention to detail and accuracy in narrating events and places. He said that he seems to be attempting to do both an Agatha Christie and P G Woodhouse, which could be a deadly combo. But he advised him to take a decision what direction he wants to go in. Mr. Hardikar, also a family friend of the author, said that the Desai family has a great tradition of storytelling, and Salil Desai’s grandmother was one of the best storytellers he ever encountered. He further prodded Desai to venture into the land of Doyle and explore the unknowns of a criminal mind, instead of restricting himself to a story focused on motive of the crime. Taking a jab at Maharashtrian writers Mr. Hardikar said that they tend to fall into the trap of an obsession with accuracy at the cost of style. He gave the example of P G Woodhouse, who played havoc with the language, but it made his books even better. Or Shakespeare, who couldn’t care less about the custodians of language and society, and wrote as he pleased without bothering himself with the mundane accuracies of grammar. And yet, Shakespeare is today, known as one of the greatest writers of all time.
Salil Desai also read out a passage from the book which gives a glimpse into the rich language that one is sure to encounter when one picks it up. Watch out for the book review of The Body in the Back Seat only at www.bookchums.com
Title: The Body In The Back Seat
Publisher: Gyaana Books
Price: Rs. 250/-
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