London, Oct 17 (PTI) A UK-based author’s second instalment of an Indian-Irish cosy crime mystery series was launched in London recently, with its India release set for next week.
Paul Waters, from Belfast in Northern Ireland, fell in love with India when he fell in love with his Delhi-born wife Aneysha. He went on to set ‘Murder in Moonlight Square’ in his wife’s city and has now followed up the success of his unusual crime-fighting duo of an Irish nun and Delhi hotel proprietor with ‘Death At the Elephant House’.
“The books have two main characters: one of them is a semi-retired Irish teaching nun called Sister Agatha Murphy of the Sisters of the Amazing Grace, nicknamed the Saggies, and her partner in crime solving Avtar Mehta — proprietor of the historic Delhi Haveli Hotel in Chandni Chowk,” Waters told PTI.
“In book one, they meet accidentally over a sneaky smoke behind his hotel and get into all sorts of trouble with the police, spies, a disappearing guest and a secret killer — while maintaining their sense of humour.
“In book two, the world’s most unlikely crime solving duo returns to figure out a deadly locked room mystery involving one of Delhi’s richest families, a charismatic gangster, a police siege and a cigarette-stealing elephant,” he said.
The storyline and characters of Waters’ mystery series, a sub-genre referred to as cosy crime for their puzzle solving characteristics, draw heavily from reality. His Irish family has links with India through a real-life aunt Agatha, who was a teaching nun who worked across the country. She was deemed too “feisty” to stay in Ireland and was shipped off by her order to India, with her final position being Principal of Jesus and Mary College in Delhi.
“My wife noticed that in her first posting, my auntie Agatha taught in Pune or Poona as it was then. That’s also where my wife’s mother and her mother’s two sisters went to school, after the family was displaced from what is now Pakistan. After some detective work, we realised that my auntie Agatha taught my wife’s late mother.
“I decided that this was India or the universe giving me a push to create my Indian-Irish cosy crime mystery series set in Chandni Chowk,” shares the author, an award-winning BBC journalist.
Following a series of book events planned in India later this month, Waters will be back at his desk to create one book for every month of the year to feature important aspects such as Holi, Diwali, cricket and wedding. While his first Indian mystery was set in December in the run up to Christmas, the latest edition finds Sister Agatha and Avtar solve a tricky murder against the backdrop of bonfires celebrating the festival of Lohri in January.
Eventually, Waters hopes readers around the world will be given a year in the life of India and his fictional characters.
“It’s important to me to write books that feel authentic to Indian readers. So even though my books are completely fictional, they are rooted in the reality of life and stories that I’ve heard from real people about their real lives,” he said.
The author’s “research” constitutes wandering the lanes of Delhi or sitting quietly and observing life over a cup of chai and gossiping over a peg.
“Fiction is real life with the settings turned up. But India starts with a setting that is already more vivid, more colourful and more in your face. And by placing my stories in Chandni Chowk, I’ve turned the dials on every sense — taste, smell, sound, sight — up even further.
“India is such a busy, lively, various, changing country, with people moving at all different paces, that it surely must be the best place to set stories,” he said. PTI AK FHK
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