She Dun It

Corduroy Mansions (a foray into mapping a London neighbourhood) and The Charming Quirks of Others (the seventh in the Isabel Dalhousie series). That,mind you,is not the sum of his output this year. McCall Smith,after all,writes at a rumoured thousand words an hour,and the most spooky interview I ever did was with him,when he said he was in India to snap out of a bout of writers’ block — he was presumably reconciling himself to wrapping up another book at a holiday pace in a fortnight!

Isabel Dalhousie is such an evolved moral being,her life experiences unfold so aesthetically,that it is somewhat embarrassing to admit that she’s a personal favourite. Crime/detective fiction today is a landscape for flawed characters,for a volatile equilibrium towards an imperfect justice,for sleuths who find in their chronic loneliness the capacity to imagine the architecture of human relationships. To be an investigator worth your salt,you cannot be in a position to sort out yourself for a happy,ethical ending by each book’s end.

Dalhousie does just that. A forty-something philosopher,she inhabits a perfectly appointed home in Edinburgh. Inheritor to a massive fortune,she indulges her passion for art,but thoughtfully,while giving away to good causes with the proper etiquette of never talking about it. For a while,she did bear a degree of oppression. As an underpaid editor of the Review of Applied Ethics,she had to put up with the machinations of philosophers on its editorial board. But then,a few books ago,she swatted them by simply buying the magazine. How do you,as a reader,account for tolerance of such perfection?

In fact,how do you even qualify her as a detective,howsoever amateur? To answer that question is,in a way,to inquire into our fascination with crime fiction. At some point in the past decade it became impossible to conduct a conversation between two readers without mention of their favourite writers of crime fiction coming up. In essence,it’s like this. To not read crime fiction is simply not an option; but then again,you cannot be indiscriminate,you need very clear preferences. Some like the Scandinavians — Stieg Larsson helped — and they tend to bleakness of landscape and spirit. Some of us like warmer climates — and along with the Italian investigators,we are thrilled at every instalment of Blaft’s compilations of Tamil pulp fiction and translations of Surender Mohan Pathak’s books. In fact,name any part of the world,and you get amazing crime fiction set there. And why,we even got a better measure of Tony Blair from a murder mystery — The Ghost by Robert Harris (which was adapted to the film The Ghost Writer) — than we did from his memoirs.

Why this popularity? The grand old lady of the genre,PD James,offered a clue recently in Talking About Detective Fiction: “WH Auden states that the most curious fact about the detective story is that it appeals precisely to people who are immune to other forms of what he describes as daydream literature. He suspects that the typical reader of detective stories is,like himself,a person who suffers from a sense of sin,by which he is not implying that mysteries are read solely by law-abiding citizens so that they may gratify vicariously the impulse to violence.” It,in a private way,helps the reader sort out her moral universe.

If that be it,if murder (that must be at the heart of crime fiction) is the ultimate contaminating crime that blurs the lines between what is private and what’s not,Dalhousie’s investigations are a challenge. Like the typical detective,she is a natural meddler,she cannot stop herself from prying. In a competitive environment of gruesome murders,to her fall what may be gentler crimes: in The Charming Quirks of Others,it’s nothing more contaminating than a spiteful letter. But as she goes about intruding into people’s lives to solve the mystery,every pace is measured by its ethical dimensions. When she is inquiring about a “suspect” from his cousin,she makes sure she does not lie about knowing him,and says instead,“I haven’t seen him recently.” Yet she is troubled by the deception of it. In short,in a narrative without the ultimate crime,she attains the status of a detective by honing the detective’s skills. Perhaps McCall Smith is suggesting that the impulses of our favourite detectives are not much different from our daily curiousness.

(mini.kapoor@expressindia.com)