Murder,He Wrote

A Nice Quiet Holiday (Westland,Rs 250) follows Anant,a law clerk who is on holiday with his employer,Justice Harish Shinde in Bhairavgarh,a little town in the Himalayas. They are guests of Shikhar Pant but all peace is disturbed by violent opposition to the alleged obscenity in a report on AIDS,authored by the Mittals,fellow guests at the house. Murder rears it’s head when Pant’s cousin,defender of the report,is found stabbed to death. Anant finds himself bang in the midst of a murder mystery,one that he has to solve.

Sudarshan was quite sure that he didn’t want to write a coming-of-age novel that seems to have become every young Indian author’s first attempt at a novel. “I’ve always been drawn to detective fiction and what I like is that the reader is guaranteed a revelation. A different kind of craft goes into writing a mystery novel,there are multiple plot lines and subplots with a romantic angle as well as a social one. In mystery writing,you hover around with the ideas and choose an opportune moment to spring them upon the reader,” explains Sudarshan,who had participated at the Kala Ghoda festival in Mumbai last year and that’s where he got lucky. “They had a book pitch,where budding authors give the synopsis of their work and interested publishers can get in touch with them,” says Sudarshan who has completed his second mystery novel about a group of young people in Delhi who’re making a film about a controversial ex-cricketer. India’s Grisham rising?