The perfect plotter

It is claimed to be more than an apocryphal story. One fine day in the 1970s,H.R.F. Keating received an invitation in the post. It was from Air India,saying that word was about that he had not yet seen Bombay,the city where Ganesh Ghote,the hero of Keatings bestselling detective fiction,worked and how would he like to be transported to and hosted in the city. To read The Perfect Murder,the first Ghote book published in the 1960s,the reader would not have guessed that,in the tradition of Hergé and Tintin,Keating had worked with extremely good research to convey a familiarity with the locale. Perfect is the name of the murdered man,a Parsi secretary to a millionaire.

But Keatings Ghote,an inspector in the city police,was not just a curiosity; he became one of the most beloved characters of detective fiction. Keating,who over time became a leading reviewer of detective fiction,kept to the coordinates of classic detective fiction,placing enough clues in his books to allow the reader to reflect and see how she could have worked out the mystery herself. And Ghote was his essentially decent,gentle detective,not only solving crimes but also working amidst the social and bureaucratic constraints of his time.

Bombay,now Mumbai,is now the setting for more gritty crime fiction. But Ghotes successors,they who dignify diverse professions by being so giving of their time,attention and empathy in heeding calls for assistance,are now a thriving group in 21st century crime fiction. Even as crime fiction now deals ever more with that grey zone where the line between right and wrong gets blurry,detectives are now able guides to different lands,using the singularity of the criminal act to gain very local profiles.