Body in the back seat

Having attended the book launch of Salil Desai's debut novel, The Body in the Back Seat in Pune recently, we were intrigued by his work and impressed with his background of film-making and having contirbuted to many anthologies. We got talking to the author and here's the unabridged version.  You have been a filmmaker for a long time now. Why did you move to writing a mystery novel? Wouldn't a film have been a more effective medium of bringing your...

The store was full of literary banter. The people on the dias were discussing about books, new trends in publishing, and how crime stories are truly entertaining. All this and much more happened at the book launch of Salil Desai’s second literary offering, Murder on A Side Street, at Crossword Store, Senapati Bapat Road on a balmy Friday evening. Dharmendra Jai Narain popularly called D. J. Narain, director of FTII, and Abhay Vaidya, Resident Editor, Daily N...

  What makes a man turn to crime? I’ve often asked myself this question. Why is it that I commit murders and revel in dead bodies?   Well you could blame it on my upbringing – I was brought up in circumstances where crime was a way of life. My mother devoured Agatha Christhie, my father adored Alfred Hitchcock. As a school boy I was introduced to Sherlock Holmes and the Hardy boys and in college I fell into the violent company of James Hadley C...