I thought I was through with early 20th c. British
detectives in India, given Joe Sandilands' downward spiral. But along
comes Sam Wyndham, and his adventures in Bengal, arriving by way of Abir Mukherjee’s A Rising Man, a summer selection from the Mysterious
Bookshop's British Crime Club.[1] I'm happy to report that the sun has not quite yet set on this slender subgenre of crime fiction.
Sam is quite in the mold of Ian Rutledge, with just a dash
of Joe S, set in the time, if not the locale of Indian Summers. He’s a Scotland Yard (Special Branch) and WW1
vet, whose new and beloved wife died of influenza while he was recovering from
wounds incurred at the Second Marne.
Sam’s war demons don’t haunt him as obviously as Rutledge’s, and he
seems to function better in the world than that weary hero. Perhaps this is because they are harnessed by
his opium addiction, a habit that accompanies him from England.
In A Rising Man,
Sam has arrived in Bengal to take up a job with the police force, at the
request of his mentor and former officer in Military Intelligence, Lord
Taggart, now Commissioner of the Calcutta Police. A white man has been murdered, and it looks
to be the work of Bengali nationalists, or terrorists, as they are called. The term is used almost quaintly here – how
can the death of one or two individuals be deemed terror, when viewed from the
perspective of the 21st c. where terror-sponsored deaths in the
dozens are hundreds are our daily new – but of course the threat to British
rule. He has two underlings: Digby, a what-what-old-boy Englishman who was
passed over for Wyndham’s job and carries that chip openly, in addition to his
long experience in Calcutta; and Surrender-Not Bannerjee, a young Bengali
sergeant who sees the Imperial police force as a path to leadership in his own
country. These three are tasked with
solving the murder toot-sweet, and of course have adventures along the way,
tying in other, seemingly-unrelated crimes and events, and uncovering surprises
about the victim and his acquaintances and various suspects along the way.
Is there anything really new here, the splendidly-constructed
setting of colonial Calcutta excepted?
Not particularly. The characters
feel a bit stock, if you’ve seen Indian
Summers, and the damaged WW1 vet, while rich in plot-opportunities
(plotportunities?), is someone we’ve seen before, in crime fiction and
beyond. Digby really does say old boy
about a hundred times too many, most of the British (Sam excepted, of course) are
colonial twats, Surrender-Not is smarter than everyone else, and fans creak
slowly in a losing battle against the oppressive heat. And there is that deeply annoying editorial
tic of italicizing anything that is a
foreign word being used by English
speakers. “I sat up on the charpoy, my shirt drenched with
perspiration.” (60) “Hardly a native in site, other than the durwans, of course . . . . “ (245) “She says they were speaking in the language
of the firangi.” (290) And of course there are endless sahibs.
I should note that this practices not as widespread – and therefore not
as annoying – as in Henry Chang’s Jack Yu series.
Sam, of course, has a more enlightened view of the natives
than the whites who’ve been out there forever, grounded, unsurprisingly in his
personal decency and sharpened by his experience in the war. Well, we wouldn’t want too-grim a Hero, would
we? So, he drinks whiskey instead of the
expected gin, dates an Anglo-Indian girl, and thrillingly thwarts some nasty
British intelligence types. If the note
on the cover “Introducing Captain Sam Wyndham” hadn’t clued us in that this
would be the first in a series, there are plenty of indications that we’ll be
seeing more of some of these folks.
And that would not be a bad thing. The tale here is well-crafted, and the
writing strong. The story ends
satisfyingly, and with some surprises. The
real star here is Mukherjee’s deeply detailed portrait of the city of Calcutta,
now known, of course, as Kolkata. Did you know that it was a city built by the
British, starting as an East India Company trading post? I didn’t.
In fact, it was the British capital of India until just a few years
before this story is set. Mukherjee
offers a map at the beginning of the book, which is an excellent resource to
support his detailed descriptions of the buildings, and streets, and
neighborhoods of colonial Calcutta. He
also has a good eye for the details that stand out and mark a foreign setting.
“I awoke to what’s
euphemistically called birdsong. It was
more of a bloody racket, nine parts screeching to one part singing. In England the dawn chorus is genteel and
melodious and inspires poets to wax lyrical about sparrows and larks
ascending. It’s blessedly short too. The poor creatures, so demoralized by the
damp and cold, sing a few bars to prove they’re still alive then pack it in and
get on with the day. Things are
different in Calcutta. There are no
larks here, just big fat greasy crows that start squawking at first light and
go one for hours without a break. Nobody
will ever write poetry about them.”
(208)
Mukherjee effectively notes how India and Calcutta in
particular, is a place where ordinary Brits can become extraordinarily
wealthy. The city’s economy grew on jute
and textiles and shipping, built by enterprising Brits and Scots who came out
to India with little and ended up living lives of unparalleled luxury –
unattainable to them back home. The
character of James Buchan exemplifies this trajectory. “Mr. Buchan is one of our beloved merchant
princes, one of the richest men in Calcutta.
He’s a jute baron, and a Scot like McAuley [the victim]. His family have been jute and rubber traders
for over a century, since the days of the East India Company.” (45) In
case you missed it, the title of the story comes from a Rudyard Kipling quote
at the very start: “Calcutta seems full
of ‘rising men.’” Sam is obviously one,
Buchan, the victim, and indeed most of the characters also, one way or another.
Alongside the British merchant imperative was a deeply
grounded sense of “moral superiority.” Look at the good we’ve brought you in the
form of Christianity, European lifestyles, civil government, the rule of law. Therefore we must be in charge because we’ve
not only harnessed the resources and created vast wealth, but also because we
are the only ones who can manage it sensibly, as evidenced by our amassing it
in the first place! Bit of circular
reasoning, that, but it follows easily that the British would do whatever was
necessary to protect this source of wealth, particularly from those natives who
might want to govern themselves.
By 1919, Calcutta is a soundly Imperial behemoth, grounded
in Victorian values, and featuring miles of solid British buildings, but
starting to be undermined by the forces of Bengali and Indian independence. Something called the Rowlett Acts has just
been passed, which basically means that the British can imprison anyone they
suspect of anything, and try political cases without juries. Everyone is a bit on edge, and Mukherjee does
a nice job of situating the story within this increasingly tense
atmosphere. The Massacre of
Amristar, for example, while peripheral to the plot, is an actual
historical event that exposes the increasingly violent British reaction to
Indian ideas about dignity and self-rule.
I’m not going to attempt to write a history of the British
in India here. Many billions of trees
have been sacrificed to the topic, so I’m sure you can find something suitable
to read about it if you are interested.
The point is that the backdrop here is precisely calculated – the story
only takes place over a few days – and works well to enhance both the dramatic
tension and the overall atmosphere of the story.
Mukherjee is British, but clearly of South Asian
descent. Bengali? I can’t say.
Per the brief bio on the back flap, he “worked in finance for twenty
years” prior to diving into crime fiction, and he lives in Scotland. Regardless of whether he’s spent significant
time in Kolkata or just researched it (because, being British, the colonial
records are bound to be excellent sources), he’s done a bang-up job. The verdict?
Read it!
[1] The MB’s BCC has been a little erratic – I’ve got one I didn’t even
start (a violent crime thriller - and after reading this review, I'm not sure I even want it next to the tub!) and another for which I had great hopes (spy)
but about 10 pages in found unoriginal.
Still, this is also the group that sent me the latest Mick Herron, so
I’ll give them a go for a little longer.
