This is not so much a novel as a riot. It’s a wildly funny, extravagantly inventive, no-punches-pulled, no-expenses-spared tale of a kitty party veteran, viz., Kannan Mehra (Kay, for short) who takes to moonlighting as a private detective for a bit of extra income, and a loads of extra excitement.
The Gods conspire to keep our sleuth busy 24 x7. When she is not hot on the trail of presumed murderers and suicide abetters (how topical is this!), Kay is called upon to referee what she believes are wife-beating bouts, and bust a gang which purloins wedding gifts. The scene of the crime – or rather crimes, since Satan never takes a day off, is one of those apartment towers common to upwardly mobile cities. It’s where uber snobbery and self-centeredness are sheathed in faux courtesy. Its inhabitants are at that tantalizing mid-life stage when love is no longer in the air… and yet yeh dil maange more.
The narrative swings like a rollercoaster, and at the controls, author Kiran Manral seems to be having a whale of a time. Her humour is on uppers so frequently, it will make Bollywood starlets look like novitiates in a particularly severe order of Sisters. Manral is prolific with her punch lines and there are such a plethora of them, that one wonders anxiously if she will have anything left for the end. But the storehouse is large, and stocks last the last page and beyond.
The author is a fan of P.G. Wodehouse and, as a detective would say, the legend’s fingerprints are on practically every page of the book. Wodehouse was justly famed, among other things, for his outrageously funny metaphors. It is clear that Manral loves metaphors too, but does she love them not wisely but too well? Perhaps, just perhaps, the self-restraint that our heroine advocates at the buffet table would have been in order even as her creator was belting out the lines.
But the swagger and panache of the book and its manic energy levels help you gloss over its excesses. Indeed, casting a critical eye on The Kitty Party Murder would be almost as bad form as taking the proverbial spade to Wodehouse’s soufflé.
Who’s the villain of the piece? For amidst all that high-octane humour, we mustn’t forget this is a murder mystery. Who-dun-it? I am not giving out any clues for that would spoil the ball that you are going to have reading this.
Book: The Kitty Party Murder
Author: Kiran Manral
Publishers: Harper Collins
Pages: 243
