This article is one of a series of 50. Together they explore the history and culture of India from her most ancient civilisations to the nation’s ambitious space programme. All 50 articles will be collected into a digital book and published in due course. To receive a FREE copy of the book, simply register for my newsletter here.

Contrary to the expectations of many, Mumbai – formerly Bombay – is not an ancient city.

Once a series of seven islands occupied for millennia by Koli fisherfolk, it was the Portuguese who gave the city its earliest identity, establishing a trading centre there in 1534 and calling it Bom Bahia – meaning ‘Good Bay’ – from whence the name Bombay is derived.

A century later the Portuguese gifted the territory to King Charles II of England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza. Charles, presumably less than impressed with this marshy offering, promptly leased the islands to the East India Company – for the measly sum of ten pounds of gold per year.

The East India Company immediately set about transforming the disparate islands, silting in the marshes to create a single landmass, and commencing their grand project of building an important entrepôt on India’s western coast.

By the end of the 1700s, Bombay, with its deepwater port and established trade routes, had become the ‘Gateway to India’. A few short decades later, the first railway was built, connecting Bombay to the country’s vast interior. With settlers arriving from Britain – and her many colonies – in pursuit of the Empire’s expansionist mission, and native residents drawn to Bombay by the prospect of employment, the city began to grow at breakneck pace, such that, today, there are twenty million residents living cheek-to-jowl within the greater municipal area that demarcates Mumbai from its environs.

In 1995 Bombay was rechristened, to be named after Mumbadevi, the stone goddess of the original Koli fishermen. There is both nostalgia and a certain perversity in the renaming: the Koli fisherfolk have been driven by the city’s relentless growth into a narrow enclave in one corner of the great city, all but forgotten in the jumbled tapestry of Mumbai’s recent history.

Like most Indian metropolises, the past two decades have seen the city face a cultural onslaught from the twin forces of globalisation and westernisation. Mumbai has changed almost beyond recognition: malls, skyscrapers, coffee shops, and shiny new apartment blocks have proliferated, transforming the city’s architectural physiognomy, and aimed at accommodating the aspirations of a burgeoning middle class. With one of the youngest – and hippest – populations of any major city in the world, Bombay is India’s ground zero for the latest fashions and fads, both homegrown and imported.

And yet the past continues to exert a tangible hold. Religion and tradition still play an enormous part in the lives of most Mumbaiikers. This dichotomy is also visible in the city’s physical landscape. New multiplexes and flashy call centres sit side-by-side with slums and older buildings built by the city’s various past occupiers, each of whom have left their imprint – from ancient Hindu temples, to Mughal architecture, to a slew of Raj-era colonial edifices built by the British.

Modern visitors to the city often talk of a relentless assault on the senses. The colour, the heat, the noise, the smells, the spectacle, and the sheer exuberance of so many people packed into such a small area.

It often takes a trip through the city’s less salubrious enclaves, the slums of Dharavi, for instance, to see beyond the immediate and recognise that this is a city – like most world metropolises – where life exists as much in the shadows as it does in the light.

In the slums, poverty is endemic, but what is more endemic is the acceptance of poverty – by both the residents of such enclaves and the city’s overseers. There is a seemingly unbridgeable gap between rich and poor, and betterment – for those on the lowest rungs of the ladder – proceeds at a snail’s pace.

And yet there remains something mythopoetic about the city.

Mumbai is India’s city of dreams. People come here to make their fortune. They come to become famous, glorified on colourful billboards as the latest stars of the world’s most prolific movie industry – Bollywood. They come to start businesses, often one-man, one-woman operations whose premises are hidden away in the slums, and whose staff are urchins with little more than bright smiles, ragged shorts and an insatiable work ethic.

In between the glamour and the gutters there is something uniquely human about the great monster-city. This intangible quality is perhaps best summed up by a quote from Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta, who describes Mumbaikers running to catch a train, being hauled aboard by waiting hands: “And at the moment of contact, they do not know if the hand that is reaching theirs belongs to a Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Brahmin or untouchable, or whether you were born in the city or arrived only this morning, or whether you live in Malabar Hill or Jogeshwari; whether you are from Bombay or Mumbai or New York. All they know is that you’re trying to get to the city of gold, and that’s enough. Come on board, they say. We’ll adjust.”

My latest novel, The Lost Man of Bombay, is set in India, in the 1950s, and features India’s first female police detective, Persis Wadia, as she investigates the body of a white man found frozen in the foothills of the Himalayas with only a small notebook containing cryptic clues. Soon, more bodies begin to pile up in Bombay, India’s city of dreams … Available from bookshops big and small and online. To see buying options please click here.  

This article is one of a series of 50 that I will be publishing on my website. Together these pieces explore the history and culture of India from her most ancient civilisations to the nation’s ambitious space programme. You can read all 50 pieces here.

All 50 articles will be collected into a digital book and published in due course. To receive a FREE copy of the book, simply register for my newsletter here. The newsletter goes out every three months and contains updates on book releases, articles, competitions, giveaways, and lots of other interesting stuff. 

If you’d like to keep up to date with what I’m up to next, I send out an email newsletter every three months which contains updates on book releases, articles, competitions, giveaways, and lots of other interesting stuff. If interested, registering takes a few seconds here. 

For a crime writer, particularly one who writes ‘traditional’ or ‘Golden Age’ crime fiction, the home of Agatha Christie is something of a Mecca. One feels the urge to make a pilgrimage to the late, great crime novelist’s Greenway estate, perched atop a hill overlooking the River Dart, just a half hour or so drive from the ‘riviera’ town of Torquay, on England’s southern coast.

Greenway is now a British National Trust property, preserved as a monument of cultural significance. And why shouldn’t it be? Aside from the fact that Christie is the biggest selling writer of all time (bar Shakespeare and the authors of the Bible) her influence now cuts across social, geographical, and linguistic boundaries. With film and stage adaptations cropping up all over the world, and her books continuing to sell by the truckload in a veritable babel of languages, she has become more than just a highly successful author. She is a bona fide artistic and cultural phenomenon.

Her house – one of many that she owned, and where, we are told she “would spend summers and Christmases with friends, relaxing by the river, playing croquet and clock golf, and reading her latest mystery to her guests” – is a touchstone for writers such as myself. My 1950-set Malabar House novels have been compared in style to Christie – The Observer newspaper commented on the first in the series, Midnight at Malabar House : “A beautifully complex plot and an Agatha Christie-ish denouement make for a thoroughly satisfying read.”

Last week I travelled to Torquay to speak at the International Agatha Christie Festival. Thirty years earlier I had first fallen in love with Christie’s work while watching the brilliant Poirot series starring David Suchet. So to now speak at the festival held each year in her home town, and to then visit her home, was something of a surreal experience.

But enough preamble! Let’s begin the tour…. Here I am outside Greenway. It’s a beautifully whitewashed Georgian property, sitting in a secluded grove, reached via a long pathway connected to the tourist entrance. There are, as you can see, some deckchairs placed outside. I can imagine Christie sitting in something similar, on a sunny day, doodling in a notebook…

During the war, the property was taken over by American coastguards (as preparation for D-Day), billeted there, with a navy vessel moored on the River Dart below. One of those soldiers, an artist, painted this wonderful frieze in Christie’s library.

Christie travelled the globe with her second husband, Max Mallowan, who she married in 1930. Max was an archaeologist and Christie became a keen amateur in his company. She brought back wonderful art and artefacts from her trips. Here are a couple of examples.

I particularly love this wonderful cobra doorstopper in Christie’s dining room, not least because the cover of my latest book, The Lost Man of Bombay offers something very similar!

And speaking of dining rooms… Here is Christie’s! I can’t be the only one imagining how many well-heeled dinner guests fell face first into their fois gras following a glass of cyanide-laced champagne…

And here I am in bed with Agatha… Well, not quite in bed with her, so much as next to her bed….

And a little glimpse into her wardrobe… Not sure I’d look good in that furry off-the-shoulder number…

Here’s Christie’s ‘thunderbox’. If she was anything like me, she might have had a book or two to read while sitting on the ‘throne’…

No trip to Christie’s home would be complete without a meeting with her beloved typewriter. It was quite a moment coming face to face with the actual machine that Christie typed some of her work on!

And lastly, here are a collection of family photos sitting on Christie’s piano. She was a keen pianist, though too shy to ever play much publicly…

All in all, a wonderful visit and one that will stay with me for quite a while. It goes without saying that I thoroughly recommend a trip to Greenway for any Christie lover.

My latest novel, The Lost Man of Bombay, is set in India, in the 1950s, and features India’s first female police detective, Persis Wadia, as she investigates the body of a white man found frozen in the foothills of the Himalayas with only a small notebook containing cryptic clues. Soon, more bodies begin to pile up in Bombay, India’s city of dreams … Available from bookshops big and small and online. To see buying options please click here.  

And don’t forget to register for my newsletter for updates on book releases, articles, competitions, giveaways, and lots of other interesting stuff. If interested, registering takes a few seconds here. 

The Queen was born before both my parents and died after they had both passed on. She was here when they migrated to the UK 50 years ago. She was their Queen. They liked her, admired her and, were they alive today, would have mourned her passing.

I was born here. For me, she’s always been there, a part of the fabric of the UK and of our lives, a constant reassuring presence. Many people are born into privilege. It’s what you do with it, that matters. She spent her life serving in the best way she could, with dignity and, I believe, compassion. She’s seen incredible change in the country and weathered good times and bad. Now, at a time that is difficult for so many, I would have loved for her to been with us, calmness personified, delivering a reassuring Xmas message.

One of my earliest memories of her came with Roald Dahl’s BFG, where she made an appearance as ‘Your Majester’… Later, while working in India in my twenties, I became aware of how well she was regarded there, by so many.

When I think of her now, I simply think of a good person who did the best she could, bound by tradition and protocol, a consummate stateswoman, and a warm, intelligent individual whose life will be judged by the absence many of us will feel now that she is no longer there.

So yes, I am sad. And I don’t mind admitting I’ve had a lump in my throat since the news came through yesterday. We can debate the monarchy as much as we wish. But this isn’t about the monarchy. This is about an individual who made a promise to serve when she was crowned Queen and fulfilled that promise beyond all expectation.

I will miss her. It’s that simple, really.

This article is one of a series of 50. Together they explore the history and culture of India from her most ancient civilisations to the nation’s ambitious space programme. All 50 articles will be collected into a digital book and published in due course. To receive a FREE copy of the book, simply register for my newsletter here.

June 25th, 1975. At the stroke of midnight, a presidential decree instigated by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of internal ‘Emergency’ in India and the world’s largest republic went from democracy to authoritarianism.

Today, many look at this 21-month period as India’s darkest political era.

The Emergency was officially declared by India’s President, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, under Article 352 of the Constitution following Indira Gandhi’s claims of imminent ‘internal and external threats to the country’. The Emergency bestowed upon the Prime Minister the authority to rule by decree, allowing elections to be suspended and civil liberties to be curbed.

During the Emergency, many of Gandhi’s political opponents were imprisoned and the press censored.

What was the background to this extraordinary state of affairs?

Between 1967 and 1971, Indira Gandhi achieved near-absolute control over the Indian government and the Indian National Congress party – the party of Gandhi (no relation) and Nehru (Indira’s father and India’s first prime minister following the advent of Independence in 1947). Within the Congress party, she outmanoeuvred her rivals, forcing the party to split in 1969: the majority of Congress MPs sided with her; most also swiftly realised that their political careers depended solely on their loyalty to the party chief.

Gandhi was popular with the masses. The PM was viewed as a socialist, standing up for the poor and for minorities. In the 1971 elections, her populist slogan ‘abolish poverty’ swept her to a rampant majority in parliament. In December of that year, she took India to war against Pakistan, a conflict that led to the independence of Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan.

This success marked the zenith of Indira Gandhi’s political career.

Things began to sour soon after, as political and civil unrest convulsed the nation. When the largest union in the country – the railway employees union – decided to strike, the action was brutally suppressed on Indira’s instructions, with thousands of employees arrested and driven out of their state-owned family quarters.

Things came to a head in 1975 when cases that had been lodged against Indira in the Allahabad High Court for election fraud and “use of state machinery for election purposes” were finally ruled upon. In a landmark ruling – made on 12 June 1975 – the Prime Minister was found guilty. The court declared her election null and void and banned her from contesting any elections for an additional six years.

Gandhi challenged the High Court’s decision in the Supreme Court, but failed. Soon after, she requested a compliant President to issue the proclamation of a state of emergency.

What was life like in India during the Emergency?

Indira and her son, Sanjay Gandhi, proposed a 25-point economic and social development plan; the Emergency became the vehicle that allowed them to enact that plan all but unchallenged. Opposition was ruthlessly shut down; according to Amnesty International 140,000 people were arrested without trial during the Emergency. The press was similarly hamstrung with local censors tasked to cut out anything that looked like criticism of Indira or the government. (For instance, in the state of Karnataka, the Inspector General of Police became the de facto editor of The Indian Express.)

Hundreds of cases of police torture were logged. One of the most shocking was the murder of P. Rajan, a student of the Regional Engineering College, Calicut, who was arrested by police for his ultra-left leanings and who later died in custody. His body was never found.

In 1976, the Congress Party appointed a committee to ‘review’ the Constitution resulting in a list of amendments designed to cripple the judiciary and to give Parliament untrammelled power to alter the Constitution. This included the infamous ‘39th Amendment’ designed to bar courts – with retrospective effect – from entertaining election petitions against the Prime Minister, a shameless stratagem to enable the overturning of the 1975 High Court verdict that had found Indira guilty of corrupt electoral practice.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, in a bid to promote Indira and Sanjay Gandhi’s unpopular reform programme, roped in celebrities to act as mouthpieces, with varying degrees of success. For instance, when famed actor and singer Kishore Kumar refused to cooperate, the Ministry ordered that he “should be banned from All India Radio” and all films in which Kumar had acted were to be “listed out for further action”.

Meanwhile, Sanjay Gandhi, convinced that curbing population growth was the key to India’s future success, spearheaded a campaign of forced sterilisation. His method was to give Indian states ‘quotas’ to achieve. Such was the level of sycophancy to the Gandhis that several chief ministers of these states doubled or even trebled the sterilisation quotas fixed by the Centre, leading to numerous instances of abuse.

The Emergency officially ended on 23 March 1977 with Indira announcing general elections. The overwhelming defeat of her Congress Party in March 1977 by an anti-Congress coalition was, for many, a fitting end to the period, though it wasn’t the end for Indira. She returned in 1980 as Prime Minister and served until her assassination in 1984 by her own Sikh bodyguards after she ordered military troops to enter the holy Sikh Golden Temple in pursuit of a militant religious leader.

The Emergency years remain a blight on India’s 75-year-old democratic republic.

My latest novel, The Lost Man of Bombay, is set in India, in the 1950s, and features India’s first female police detective, Persis Wadia, as she investigates the body of a white man found frozen in the foothills of the Himalayas with only a small notebook containing cryptic clues. Soon, more bodies begin to pile up in Bombay, India’s city of dreams … Available from bookshops big and small and online. To see buying options please click here.  

This article is one of a series of 50 that I will be publishing on my website. Together these pieces explore the history and culture of India from her most ancient civilisations to the nation’s ambitious space programme. You can read all 50 pieces here.

All 50 articles will be collected into a digital book and published in due course. To receive a FREE copy of the book, simply register for my newsletter here. The newsletter goes out every three months and contains updates on book releases, articles, competitions, giveaways, and lots of other interesting stuff. 

This article is one of a series of 50. Together they explore the history and culture of India from her most ancient civilisations to the nation’s ambitious space programme. All 50 articles will be collected into a digital book and published in due course. To receive a FREE copy of the book, simply register for my newsletter here.

Nagaland is located in Northeast India, bordering Myanmar (formerly Burma) to the east and the tea state of Assam to the west. It is one of India’s smallest states, with a population of barely two million, largely Christian; it is also one of the country’s most politically volatile regions.

Nagaland became the 16th state of India on 1 December 1963 and has been consistently wracked by insurgency, inter-ethnic conflict, and political violence, originally stemming from a Naga call for independence from the state of Assam.

Supposedly descended from the Mongols, the Naganese settled as a series of tribes in eastern India from the twelfth century onwards, only coming together in modern times around a desire to establish a collective identity within the new India created by Partition and the advent of Independence in 1947.

Of the many tribes that inhabit the forested state, the Konyak warrior tribe hold a special place in Indian folklore. Known for their ferocity and penchant for engaging in war with rival tribes, they become infamous for their headhunting prowess, routinely beheading enemies and returning with the severed heads as trophies that they then carried into future battles.

It was believed by the Nagas that these heads exuded a spiritual force that benefited crops and brought prosperity to the village. The decapitated heads also served as intriguing home décor, proudly displayed on the walls and doorways of Naga longhouses.

Europeans first encountering this fierce Naga tribe were fascinated by this macabre practise, writing of “skull houses”. Commentators also noted that each man in the village was expected to contribute to the grisly collection – any man unable to take a head in battle was considered lacking in courage, an unworthy warrior.

In much the same way that modern gang members in Latin America and inner city Los Angeles use tattoos to display the status of their ‘kills’, the Konyak warriors used patterned body tattoos to mark their skill in battle. Face tattoos, however, were reserved for those who had returned with enemy heads, hand-tapped into the skin using sharpened rattan canes and tree sap pigment.

The arrival of Christian missionaries in the region during the second half of the 19th century gradually began to erode the Konyak’s warrior ideology. As the British pacified the area and intertribal conflict declined, the need for battle also waned.

In 1935, the British officially banned the taking of heads with the Indian government following suit, post-Independence, in 1960, though the tradition lingered on for a few years in remote hilltop villages. By the mid 2010s the last generation of Naga headhunters were gradually dying out.

With them dies their ancient tradition. 

My latest novel, The Lost Man of Bombay, is set in India, in the 1950s, and features India’s first female police detective, Persis Wadia, as she investigates the body of a white man found frozen in the foothills of the Himalayas with only a small notebook containing cryptic clues. Soon, more bodies begin to pile up in Bombay, India’s city of dreams … Available from bookshops big and small and online. To see buying options please click here.  

This article is one of a series of 50 that I will be publishing on my website. Together these pieces explore the history and culture of India from her most ancient civilisations to the nation’s ambitious space programme. You can read all 50 pieces here.

All 50 articles will be collected into a digital book and published in due course. To receive a FREE copy of the book, simply register for my newsletter here. The newsletter goes out every three months and contains updates on book releases, articles, competitions, giveaways, and lots of other interesting stuff. 

This article is one of a series of 50. Together they explore the history and culture of India from her most ancient civilisations to the nation’s ambitious space programme. All 50 articles will be collected into a digital book and published in due course. To receive a FREE copy of the book, simply register for my newsletter here.

India is a nation steeped in spirituality, birthplace to several of the world’s most important religions: Sikhism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and home to adherents of many others such as Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. The oldest of these is Hinduism, with a billion adherents worldwide, and which has existed in one form or another for thousands of years, reflected in a vast pantheon of gods, all leading back to the one absolute essence of the cosmos, known as Brahman. As a consequence, the country is dotted with temples, shrines, and other centres of worship, old and new, storied and humble. Many are world heritage sites, visited by millions, pilgrims and tourists alike.

Of these, one that has garnered intense press coverage in recent years is the Padmanabhaswamy Temple in the state of Kerala, the so-called ‘richest temple in the world’.

Originally built in the sixth century A.D. this Hindu temple, dedicated to Lord Vishnu, was run – until a recent Supreme Court of India ruling – by the royal family of Travancore. One of the temple’s older names is believed to be ‘The Temple of Gold’ – a reflection of both its immense wealth, and the fact that such prosperity existed even in antiquity.

That wealth came to light in a blaze of publicity in 2011 when hidden chambers some twenty feet beneath the temple were ordered opened by the Supreme Court. A team of archaeologists eventually discovered eight vaults, and labelled them A-H.

Six of the vaults were opened – for the purposes of an inventory – and subsequently closed again.

The revelations of that inventory astonished the world.

Among the reported findings were a three-and-a-half feet tall solid pure golden idol, studded with hundreds of precious stones, and a solid gold throne. Sacks of gemstones lay in the vaults, and pots of coins including thousands of gold coins from the Roman Empire and from the Napoleonic era; there was also an 18-foot-long pure gold chain, a 500 kilo gold sheaf, gold elephants, and gold coconut shells. The valuables are believed to have been accumulated by the temple over several millennia, having been donated by royal dynasties and worshippers.

It is conservatively estimated that the value of the hoard stands at over 20 billion dollars, making the Padmanabhaswamy Temple the wealthiest place of worship in the world.

Yet the temple hasn’t given up all its secrets.

Vault B remains unopened. Deemed the most sacred place within the temple, the enormous steel door fronting the chamber is adorned with two massive cobras and has no visible means of entry. The cobras are said to protect the vault and its treasures – legend has it that only the wisest sages can open the vault by the chanting of special ‘snake’ mantras.

It is also said that, like the tomb of Tutankhamun, anyone attempting to penetrate Vault B’s secrets will be cursed with ill fortune, and that disasters will follow around the globe. This notion of a curse was given credence when a key petitioner for the opening of the vault died an untimely death.

Such is the centrality of religion on the subcontinent, that the vault remains unopened to this day.

My latest novel, The Lost Man of Bombay, is set in India, in the 1950s, and features India’s first female police detective, Persis Wadia, as she investigates the body of a white man found frozen in the foothills of the Himalayas with only a small notebook containing cryptic clues. Soon, more bodies begin to pile up in Bombay, India’s city of dreams … Available from bookshops big and small and online. To see buying options please click here.  

This article is one of a series of 50 that I will be publishing on my website. Together these pieces explore the history and culture of India from her most ancient civilisations to the nation’s ambitious space programme. You can read all 50 pieces here.

All 50 articles will be collected into a digital book and published in due course. To receive a FREE copy of the book, simply register for my newsletter here. The newsletter goes out every three months and contains updates on book releases, articles, competitions, giveaways, and lots of other interesting stuff. 

Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, the world’s largest crime fiction fest, returned in full, post-pandemic splendour last week. With a record-breaking heatwave sending the UK into a literal meltdown, I found my train to the northern English spa town of Harrogate (where the festival takes place each year) cancelled. Rather than attempting to brave the heat-crazed crowds beating each other senseless at King’s Cross station to board the one train running that afternoon, I threw my luggage into the boot of my car, and set off on the four-hour journey from London to Harrogate, expecting wildfires, massive tailbacks, and possibly an appearance from the Rock to save us all from Armageddon.

Instead, I enjoyed a very pleasant, traffic-free drive on a tropically warm afternoon. I even had time to stop by a Yorkshire field burnt golden brown by the sun – dazed sheep milling around in sweaty confusion – to contemplate my oneness with nature.

Arriving in Harrogate, I made my way to the Old Swan, perennial venue for the festival and the hotel where Agatha Christie turned up during her infamous eleven day vanishing act back in 1926, an incident that led to a nationwide search operation involving, among others, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, and a psychic employed by Doyle who proved about as useful as a chocolate hammer.

Christie herself would later claim amnesia; others suggest she staged the disappearance to get back at her errant husband, Archibald Christie, who’d decided to leave her for his mistress. Some may feel Archie’s behaviour warrants censure, but I’m from the school of thought that believes that, without his wandering eye, Christie would not have ended up at the Old Swan and thus we probably wouldn’t have the Theakston’s festival today. It’s about time we acknowledged Archie’s heroic contribution to crime fiction.

The next day, Thursday, I ran a workshop at the hotel on how writers can write outside their own lived experience, particularly their own cultural heritage. I firmly believe authors should have the right to write whatever they wish, yet the fear of being accused of cultural appropriation has created a climate of fear in the publishing industry. There’s a lot of red-faced vitriol, but very little in the way of actual advice, something I’ve tried to rectify.

Thursday evening saw the presentation of the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award. I was shortlisted for Midnight at Malabar House, the first of my historical crime series set in Bombay, 1950, and was invited up on stage to crack a couple of jokes before the eventual winner, a very deserving Mick Herron (of Slow Horses fame), was crowned, with Jo Knox getting a Highly Commended nod.

Here I am with my fellow shortlistees, Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Jo Knox, Will Dean, and Elly Griffiths, friends and wonderful writers all. When Mick’s name was announced we all instinctively got up to give him a big, non-sexual group hug. That’s the crime fiction community in a nutshell. (Though I may have tried to steal Mick’s wallet while I had him in a close embrace.)

That same evening my favourite crime writer, American Michael Connelly, creator of the Harry Bosch novels, was awarded a lifetime achievement gong. Chatting to him onstage, somewhat awestruck, was a wonderful moment, though I may have started to ramble under the pressure, going on about the correct way to play a forward-defensive stroke in cricket and the sexual proclivities of nematodes. The brain does weird things when you meet your heroes. (But this may explain the restraining order Connelly took out against me the next day.)

On the Friday, I chaired a session in the Orion Incident room, with authors Mari Hannah, Winnie Li, and Robin Morgan-Bentley, discussing authenticity in fiction. An inspiring session for those who attended… and for those of us speaking!

In the evening, I enjoyed a Thai meal in a very loud dining room, bellowing at the top of my lungs into the ears of fellow Hodder & Stoughton authors, including a favourite of mine, the brilliant John Connelly whose The Dirty South I’d just finished reading. I even managed to showcase some origami skills over dessert. (It’s a bloody boat! The number of people who’ve commented that it looks like some sort of deformed hat from the Napoleonic era…)

On Saturday, I played a role in the murder mystery written by Denise Mina for the gala dinner. My character was, apparently, into cricket and so, given that I own a cricket sweater, I decided to wear it – I believe in the Daniel Day Lewis school of method acting. (And, yes, I may have hammed it up a little.)

I then spent the evening wearing the sweater to the Val McDermid and Mark Billingham quiz – I think a few people might have got the impression that I’m an eccentric who likes to wander around in sports outfits at author gatherings.

Our team – comprising Craig ‘the Brain’ Sisterson, Jo ‘Heavy Metal’ Knox, Jon ‘Coatsey’ Coates – was assembled like DC’s Suicide Squad following a trawl of local prisons, with fifth member, the urbane Sophia Bennett, press-ganged into joining simply because she found herself standing in the queue behind us. As it turns out, we became greater than the sum of our parts. For one brief hour we soared, touching heights we could never have dreamed of, eventually finishing second out of over forty teams, behind Mick Herron’s gang, a win that courted controversy, with wild accusations of rampant rule-breaking…

On the Sunday, I spoke on a historical crime fiction panel with my great friend and Red Hot Chilli Writers podcast co-host Abir Mukherjee, alongside Chris Brookmyre and Dr Marisa Haetzman (the husband and wife couple known as Ambrose Parry), Leonora Nattrass, and Robbie Morrison. The panel was a riot and we stumbled back into the sun afterwards to be led, like lambs to the slaughter, to the book signing room where we were astonished to find queues of readers waiting to meet us – and not to pelt us with fruit. One can only assume they were gathered out of pity or had been forced along at gunpoint…

A highlight of the festival throughout the four days was the big tent where authors and industry professionals congregated all day and well into the night. Conversation flowed – among other things. I met old friends I hadn’t seen in ages, and made new ones. Here’s me with the amazing Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth – I’ve been reading her for years. Meeting your literary heroes: a feeling that never gets old.

The big tent was where much of the real action took place: weepy re-unions, scurrilous gossip, bleary-eyed deckchair duels, drunken vows of eternal friendship. It’s a unique atmosphere and impossible to explain unless you’ve been there, in the thick of it.

Returning home, I find myself already looking forward to next year’s event. The consensus appears to be that this had been a terrific Theakston’s, one of the best ever. Kudos to the programming team and the brilliant onsite Harrogate International Festivals team, in their intimidating black outfits with sexy SWAT-team earpieces, led by the inimitable Sharon Canavar. Here they are before … and after – enjoying a well-deserved rest.

If you’ve found this remotely worth reading you might want to join my newsletter. I regularly use it to post articles, competitions, giveaways, etc. You can join by clicking here: https://vaseemkhan.com/book-club/

My latest novel, The Dying Day, is set in India, in the 1950s, and features India’s first female police detective as she investigates the disappearance of one of the world’s great treasures, a 600-year-old copy of Dante’s The Divine Comedy stored at Bombay’s Asiatic Society. Soon bodies begin to pile up, with only a series of cryptic riddles left in their wake… Buy from an indie bookshop, a book chain or online, such as here. 

(Article originally written for the Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime.)

The CSI effect. We’ve all heard the term, but perhaps only those who work in and around law enforcement and the judicial system wince with pain each time it enters their field of view. The term was coined to describe the way the TV show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (and its various derivatives) has warped the popular perception of how forensics, crime scene investigation, and the investigative process in general, works. This warping effect has embedded itself to such an extent that some judges feel obliged to warn juries in advance that they must disregard whatever they might have gleaned from such shows when they sit at trial.

So what is myth and what is real when it comes to modern crime investigation?

First, an introduction: why am I qualified to talk to you about this?

Well, firstly, I’ve been writing for a long time. 23 years and 7 novels unpublished before becoming an ‘overnight’ success. I was born in England, but spent a decade working in India and, as a consequence, write two award-winning crime series set there. My debut, The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra, was a bestseller, a Sunday Times 40 best crime novels published 2015-2020 pick, and translated into 16 languages. The series won a Shamus Award in the States. In 2021, Midnight at Malabar House, the first in my Malabar House novels set in 1950s Bombay, won the Crime Writers Association Historical Dagger, the world’s premier prize for historical crime fiction.

More importantly, for the past 16 years I’ve worked at University College London’s Department of Security and Crime Science. I’m not an academic but help manage some of our larger projects and research centres, working closely with researchers examining an array of crime types: trafficking, cybercrime, terrorism, etc. We work with police forces and law enforcement agencies around the world. For instance, one of the centres I help run is the Dawes Centre for Future Crime. I bet you’re now picturing Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report! To be clear, in that particular film, science was conspicuous by its absence – future homicides were predicted by three ‘psychics’, known as pre-cogs, who would send Tom Cruise racing around to stop the would-be murderer in his or her tracks. In the real world, academics tend to focus more on using data and scientific research rather than complicated stunts.

Myth  #1 – The criminal mastermind!

One of the key insights of crime science is that “even good people can do bad things, given the right opportunity”. This helps to explain why people with no prior history of transgression can commit the worst crimes. A simple example is someone becoming drunk in a bar, engaging in an argument, finding a glass or other weapon to hand, and violently attacking another person. Or a stockbroker committing insider trading fraud simply because the opportunity arises to do so.

The truth is that most criminals are opportunistic, rather than having some sort of ‘genetic disposition’ towards crime. Most are also ‘intellectually challenged’ i.e. stupid. The suave, refined, Hannibal Lecter trope is hugely misleading. As is the idea that the fastest growing and most ubiquitous form of crime today – cybercrime – is carried out by nerdy teenagers in hipster T-shirts sitting in their mothers’ basements.

Cybercrime is now the preserve of organised criminal gangs. From ID theft to phishing scams to cryptocurrency fraud to cyberwarfare, OC gangs have the finance and muscle to recruit those with the skills to carry out such crimes and to do so in a coordinated manner. Most law enforcement agencies are vastly outgunned – they lack the skills, the funding, and the person-power to compete. Things are changing, however, as lawmakers are finally cottoning on to the scale of the problem and throwing money at initiatives and centres to get a handle on things. But for years it’s been like getting the Titanic to change course.

Myth  #2 – Forensic science moves quickly

In CSI and other shows, the ever-so-cool detective/forensic scientist/all-round action hero finds a hair or a partial fingerprint and within hours it’s been whizzed through the ‘system’ and, hey presto, out pops a tangible lead, and/or a list of associated suspects/known associates, conveniently with a set of up-to-date addresses, for a swift SWAT takedown. Yeah… Um. No.

In reality, if a case is not high profile or political – and 99.99% of them are not – then the level of forensic science resource allocated to the scene may be insufficient to collect all available evidence. Next, a whole heap of admin and paperwork has to be completed as part of both the chain of evidence (very necessary!) and the process of requesting forensic analysis. That analysis – usually outsourced to a hired lab – can then take weeks, if not months. For instance, the DNA case backlog is enormous in most western countries. This is one reason why sometimes suspects unable to achieve bail are kept under arrest for inordinate lengths of time before their case can make it to trial. I stress that this isn’t the fault of law enforcement or forensic scientists – there’s simply too much incoming for the number of skilled people available.

Myth #3 – Justice always comes through in the end

Afraid not. Miscarriages of justice are commonplace. But this isn’t necessarily because of police or judicial incompetence. It can often be because of bias in the interpretation of forensic evidence, a topic we don’t often hear about, particularly as it doesn’t make for racy action sequences on CSI-style shows. Such shows have trained us to believe that forensic evidence is the gold standard. It’s science, and science doesn’t make mistakes, right?

In a sense, yes, science, when done correctly, should be exact. But the problem is that forensic evidence can be subject to ‘interpretation bias’ or error. Different forensic experts can interpret the same evidence in different ways, given a particular set of circumstances, or depending on whether they are being engaged by the defence or prosecution. This dynamic is constantly on display in jury trials.

These days even DNA evidence can be challenged; for instance, by accusations of forensic evidence transfer – the idea that evidence has been transferred accidentally from the crime scene to a suspect. Recent research has shown that this is a lot easier to do than was previously imagined. Trace evidence hangs around for a lot longer than was once thought possible.

So what really happens?

One of the most common anxieties among crime writers concerns the accuracy of the investigative process. The good news is that readers, by and large, are less worried about the accuracy of every aspect of the investigative process than they are about plot and characters. If you keep the pages turning, and don’t make obvious errors, they will go along with you for the ride. In fact, in some cases, you will have to abandon reality in order to avoid bogging things down, for instance, in the depiction of the time it takes to process lab results. This isn’t a licence to be lazy. It’s still important to make every effort possible to portray an investigation as correctly as you can.

What is an investigation?

The manner of investigation that takes place clearly depends on the type of crime novel. A police investigation will differ considerably from the investigation an intrepid journalist undertakes. A private investigator will have freedom to pursue actions that a police detective would consider beyond their legal remit. A legal thriller will showcase an investigation involving paid investigators, police, and revelations in court, some of them from specialist experts. Nevertheless, there are certain investigative elements that tend to pop up in most crime novels, to a greater or lesser degree.

Analysis of the crime scene

Certain things have to happen at a crime scene. These apply particularly to police procedurals and contemporary crime fiction, but the results from these activities also pop up in most other kinds of crime genre. So, for instance, the private investigator/journalist/lawyer will find a way to talk to an officer working on the investigation to tease out these details or figure out how to take a peek at the case file.

Here are the tasks that usually happen at the crime scene:

• A responding officer(s) has to arrive and make preliminary observations.

• The crime scene has to be contained. Once contained, a crime scene log is usually kept, detailing all those who have stepped inside the tape and into the scene.

• A forensics team has to be called out and a thorough examination of the crime scene conducted. Crime scene photographers and videographers often document the scene before the fingerprint and trace evidence sweep is carried out.

• Forensic analysis works on Locard’s Exchange Principle – every contact leaves a trace. Forensic evidence found at a crime scene can take many forms from DNA to trace evidence such as soil and cloth fibres.

• If the crime is a murder, a medical specialist (usually a pathologist) has to be called out to certify death. That individual will also be prevailed upon to offer initial thoughts on Time of Death (TOD), and method of death.

• Often, preliminary interviews are conducted at the scene with witnesses, those in the immediate vicinity, and the discoverer of the body. Further canvassing interviews might also be conducted with neighbours – though this may also happen later as a matter of routine in most police investigations.

Initial stages of the investigation

Most investigations start with a framing of the task ahead, where the law enforcement team assigned to the case meets to outline the actions that now have to take place in pursuit of the investigation, and to divide up responsibilities.

Other early steps include establishing the victim’s last known movements. This will throw up further interviews and avenues of investigation. Preliminary forensics will return and new lines of enquiry will open up, while others will be ruled out. By now various clues will be fighting for the team’s attention. For instance, if there is CCTV footage then that needs to be examined. Digital forensics is an increasingly large and resource-intensive aspect of modern investigations: laptops, phones, emails, social media analysis.

The main investigation

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series (my favourite crime novels) is the meticulousness with which Connelly depicts the investigative process. Bosch is shown going through the motions as he tracks down every piece of evidence and follows it through to its logical – and sometimes unexpected – conclusion. Connelly lingers over scenes describing Bosch going through documents and old records, or hunting down seemingly trivial bits of information. He builds the case gradually and we have a ringside seat for each step that Bosch takes. Connelly does this because he has a wealth of insider information at his disposal and a yen for accuracy.

I was lucky enough to meet Connelly at an event in London – we shared a UK publicist and she was kind enough to introduce us. Connelly was the Los Angeles Times crime reporter before becoming a full-time writer and he continues to maintain very strong relationships with the police department. He told me that he deliberately strives for procedural accuracy, partly because of the feedback he receives from active police detectives. One way you can see this is in the manner in which Bosch conducts suspect interviews. The aim of such an interview is to get suspects to talk. Contrary to TV depictions, few officers start such interviews by beating up the suspect. And the less said about ‘good cop bad cop’ the better.

Remember that the exact path of your investigation will depend on the type of protagonist you’re writing. The process should be organic to your character and the plot of your novel. And yes, there is still a place for gut instinct, for your protagonist to follow their own nose, even if it leads in a contrary direction to the evidence, even if it defies common sense, even if leads them straight into quicksand. After all, if your protagonist didn’t take charge of their own narrative every once in a while, it would make for a very dull story!

I’ll leave you with a quote from Joseph Wambaugh, former Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America: ‘The best crime stories are not about how cops work on cases. They’re about how cases work on cops.’ In other words, it’s your character’s trial and tribulations, their narrative arc that will really bring readers along. Decide early on what is the unique persona, insight, skill, or approach that your protagonist can bring to an investigation that makes them worth following. If you can capture that you will have a lead that readers can’t help but want to spend time with. Always keep that in mind and you won’t go far wrong.

How do I find the information I need?

There is now so much information available online and in forensic/criminal investigation textbooks that you can readily get all the detail you need. That doesn’t mean it isn’t useful to pick the brain of an expert. They can touch off new ideas, new avenues to explore, and give you some granular detail about the day-to-day aspects of their work that you might otherwise not obtain.

So how do you do that? Some simple googling will throw up plenty of experts for hire. Consulting to the crime fiction industry is big business. Just be careful to pick someone with current knowledge. You can also write to police stations, lawyer’s offices, private investigators, university researchers, or journalists. Sometimes you’ll strike out, and sometimes you’ll have to buy someone lunch to get an hour of their time. You can also try to arrange visits to police stations or legal chambers. There are a number of mini-forensics courses that lead you through a mock crime scene. Writing a legal thriller? If you’re in the UK, you can go sit in the Old Bailey. It’s free and open to anyone.

Final messages

I cover a lot of the above material and much more in a six-module online course that I created for Curtis Brown called Writing Crime Fiction. https://www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk/course/writing-crime-fiction/

If you’ve found this useful you might want to join my newsletter. I regularly use it to post articles, competitions, giveaways, etc. In my next one I will include a rundown of all the different types of forensic evidence you might encounter during an investigation. You can join by clicking here: https://vaseemkhan.com/book-club/

And, of course, I’m going to encourage you to buy one of my books! If you might enjoy the richly evoked setting of India, with a strong emphasis on character and challenging puzzles, then my books might be for you. Buy from an indie bookshop, a book chain or online, such as here: https://amzn.to/3OUQpYE

My quarterly newsletter contains articles, competitions, giveaways, short stories, book news, and recommendations. Simply register here. 

Teeth on the canvas

Trying to make a career as an author is like a boxing match in a Rocky film. You come in with wild expectations, buoyed by mindlessly-optimistic rags-to-riches stories. You showboat your way to the ring, play to the crowd a little, maybe blow a few air kisses… and then reality punches you in the face. You get knocked down, get back up, get knocked down a few more times, and then, if you’re lucky enough to stumble to the end with half your teeth, you end up narrowly losing on points.

OK. So maybe it’s not as bleak as that. There are moments that remind you why you set out on this journey of self-flagellation in the first place. Finishing your first novel. Getting an agent. Seeing your debut in print. Positive reviews. Meeting readers. Meeting other writers (yes, that is a positive). Bestseller status. Awards. And so on and so forth.

Last year, Midnight at Malabar House, my sixth published novel, won the Crime Writers Association Historical Dagger. It is with a sense of poignancy that I now hand over the crown to another worthy winner. (Of course, like any normal author, I considered making voodoo dolls of the nominees and stabbing them repeatedly with a letter opener. But I’ve never been very good at handicrafts, so I’ve settled for being magnanimous instead.)

In this piece, written on the eve of the CWA Daggers awards night, I look back on 30 years of writing, unpublished and published. That’s a lot of getting knocked down and getting back up again. A lot of teeth on the canvas. Has it been worth it? Undeniably, categorically… yes!

Pre-publication wilderness

Mumbai, 2004. I’m standing at a hole-in-the-wall photocopy shop, a stray goat nuzzling affectionately at my crotch, traffic blasting by behind me. I’d been working in the city for seven years (having been born and raised in London) and I’d just paid a small fortune to photocopy thirty odd bundles of the first three chapters of my latest completed novel. I was 31 years old and I’d been writing since I was 17. This was the fourth novel I’d completed, the fourth I would send in to a hatful of British agents, bracing myself in advance for the inevitable fusillade of rejection letters that would follow. (I’d already collected enough of them to wallpaper the Great Wall of China. Twice.)

Everyone tells you that writing is about perseverance. What they don’t tell you is how bloody hard it is to keep picking yourself up off the floor each time a book you’ve sweated over for a year or more is rejected. It’s difficult to be zen when what you really want to do is drive round to the agent who’s just sent you another standard rejection note, drag them into the street like the cur they are, and pummel them in the gonads until they agree you’re the best thing to hit the literary scene since Hemingway.

I wrote my first novel aged 17, an epic SF comic fantasy in the vein of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. I sent it in to several agents confident that my first book deal was on its way – along with the fabled Money Truck – thus proving to my parents how wrong they were to insist I go to university and get a ‘real job’. There was one small problem. The book was sh*t.

Fast forward 23 years and six more novels, of ever decreasing levels of awfulness. I know this because by the final entries I was receiving the odd rejection note carrying a few words of encouragement. I can’t thank those agents enough. That faint praise – as tepid as the light from a distant galaxy – nevertheless meant everything. I wrote literary novels, SF, romance… anything I thought might get me into print. It wasn’t until I decided to write something purely for myself, following a decade in India, that I was finally published.

Euphoria

At the age of 40, and back in London, I found an agent – Euan Thorneycroft at A.M. Heath, one of the oldest agencies in the country. A few months later, Euan called me at the office to tell me we had a four-book deal with Hachette for the Baby Ganesh Agency series, beginning with The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra. I may have shouted. Possibly even soiled myself in the excitement. (A quite natural reaction, I’ve been assured.)

The series is set in modern India, aimed at fans of the wildly successful No.1 Ladies Detective Agency books, though mine are a little darker in tone. They reflect the ten years I lived in India, and my desire to showcase a changing, modern country. Chopra, a Mumbai policeman forced into early retirement and who must solve a local murder – while dealing with the unusual problem of inheriting a one-year-old elephant – is a mouthpiece for my own feelings towards the social issues I saw in a country being transformed by globalisation but weighed down by legacy problems.

Here’s the first lesson you learn. There are a LOT of books published. You think you’re up on a pedestal, the spotlight shining down on you and you alone, like Beyoncé at the Superbowl. Wrong. You’re not Beyoncé. Your publisher – and your publicist – is probably handling a dozen books out that week. Big names. New names. You’re just another horse in the stable. That’s not to be sniffed at, but it’s worth taking a dose of the realism salts before buying that velvet jacket, checking yourself in at the Dorchester, and inviting your chums around to gawp at your newfound status as a big literary wheel.

Having said this, I was relatively lucky. My publicist managed to bully BBC Breakfast into interviewing me. The book went on to become a bestseller, published in 16 languages and was picked by the Sunday Times as one of the 40 best crime novels published between 2015-2020.

I was on my way.

Navigating the publishing industry

Fast forward almost a decade. With eight books published, across two series, and a new three book deal – all with Hachette – I’m relatively settled in the industry… which is a bit like saying I have a berth on the Titanic.

I’m often asked: what’s the number one lesson you’ve learned? The answer is one that surprises most people, especially eager newbies, waiting starry-eyed for pearls of literary wisdom to fall from my lips. Bless their little hearts.

Friendships are the single most important ingredient for both your sanity and your survival. It’s a lonely business, but it doesn’t have to be. One of the most wonderful things I’ve learned about the writing community is how friendly it is. Most of the time we share a grisly esprit de corps, comparing war stories as we send another book out to meet the machine guns of literary No Man’s Land. When good news comes along, we clap each other on the back, and hope it’s our turn next. We’re a bit like the Amish – we’re clannish and build metaphorical barns together, such as when we turn up to each others’ launches, the token author among the bemused mob of friends and family who thought they were coming to a birthday party (or a wake). Or when we rampage through a quaint English village hosting its first lit fest after we’re told the bar has run dry.

I’ve been particularly astonished by the support those established in the industry – authors, reviewers, editors, agents, booksellers – have been willing to offer newbies. Alas, I don’t have space to mention all the wonderful friends and lovely gestures over the years. I’d also be mortified about missing someone out – beware the brittle-egoed, slighted, slightly-unhinged author! (Anyone remember Jack Nicholson in The Shining?) But suffice to say that, if I’ve achieved anything today, it’s because – to use the words of Tennessee Williams’ Blanche DuBois – of the ‘kindness of strangers’.

Five lessons I’ve learned…

OK. I see not everyone’s sold on my Forrest Gump ‘life is like a box of chocolates’ argument. You cynical so and so’s. So what practical advice can I offer? Here goes:

#1 – Themes matter – Midnight at Malabar House is set in 1950s Bombay. Persis Wadia, India’s first female police detective, is consigned to Malabar House, Bombay’s smallest police station, with a gang of fellow ‘undesirables’. And then the murder of a prominent British diplomat falls into her lap… The book is more than a crime novel. It explores India at a turbulent time, just a few years after Independence, Gandhi’s assassination, and the horrors of Partition. Persis is operating in a paternalistic environment, in an era when few women were given license to pursue careers. I invoke these themes in the series because I believe they can teach us something about the society we live in today. Publishers  love a theme because they know it can elevate a book above the crowd. It gives marketing departments something solid to work with. Themes are everywhere in crime fiction. For instance, in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy Stieg Larsson showcased his favourite theme: violence against women.

#2 – Be different, but be the same – The industry works on a phenomenon known as ‘comping’ – of comparing new acquisitions to previously published books to determine sales potential. Why else do you think so many books, covers, and titles are similar? Don’t get me wrong. Originality is always valued. But, often, your next great idea needs to be similar enough to an existing idea that, in a publisher’s mind, it can attract a current audience, but also be just different enough to pass muster as something new, with the potential to attract a wider readership. By all means, write the next Gone Girl or Rebus, but what is the fresh angle you can bring to it?

#3 – Learn from Hemingway – In my early thirties, I set myself the challenge of reading one hundred of the greatest literary novels ever written. I selected them from the Guardian and Telegraph’s lists of such novels, and Booker, Pulitzer and Nobel prize winners, classics and contemporary works: Ulysses, 1984, The Tin Drum, Catch 22, Schindler’s Ark, Money… I could go on. The project took five years, and I made notes as I went. No writing class could ever have taught me as much. Jaded agents and editors are turned on by quality writing. Well written prose stands out. A turn of phrase. An acute observation. A scene handled deftly. You can’t afford to squander a good idea by submitting it in substandard prose.

#4 – Characters matter more than plot – Sacrilege? No. Publishers know that a great character is more profitable than a single great plot. Great characters encourage loyalty and facilitate a series of novels. Secondly, if readers fall in love with characters they will forgive the occasional plot inconsistency. The trick is creating characters that stand out. Decide early on what is the unique persona, insight, skill, or approach that your protagonist can bring to an investigation that makes them worth following. Persis is India’s only female police detective, ruthless and single-minded in an environment that undermines her at every opportunity. She works with Archie Blackfinch – an English forensic scientist from the London Metropolitan Police. But this is post-Raj era India. An Englishman and a headstrong Indian women?… It can’t work. Or can it?…

#5 – Don’t be afraid of borrowing stuff that works – My last novel was The Dying Day, the follow-up to Midnight at Malabar House. M. W. Craven, CWA Gold Dagger-winner calls it: ‘The Da Vinci Code meets post-Independence India.’ In the book a 600-year old copy of Dante’s The Divine Comedy goes missing from Bombay’s Asiatic Society. As Persis investigates, she uncovers a trail of cryptic clues, including riddles written in verse… and then she finds the first body. Dan Brown’s series has sold 300 million copies for a reason. In crime fiction, there are many tried and trusted formulas. We can all learn and build on the work of others. Not copy – but take a leaf out of. If you want to see this in action, please do invest in a copy of The Dying Day… Another thing I’ve learned – authors need to be forthright about selling their work!

What lies ahead?

The times they are a-changing. A piece like this wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention the dreaded ‘d’ word now permeating the publishing industry… No, not drunkenness… Diversity.

I’ve never thought of myself as a ‘pioneer’, though in some respects I, and many others, have established a beachhead for authors of our background. In my opinion, the industry is making a genuine attempt to tackle the issue of inclusivity. But it’s not as straightforward as just publishing more authors from underrepresented communities. For instance, the reason it has taken so long for British Asian crime writers to find their feet is not entirely to do with risk-averse publishers. In some part the dearth of such writers is because Asian parents (including my own) react with horror at the notion that their progeny might willingly embark on a profession that might see them eventually busking on the Underground to make ends meet.

Perhaps the truth that lies at the heart of the current debate on diversity in the arts is that the only thing that really matters is that we all share a singular dream, to enrich the world with stories that spring from inside us.

We are here; we have a voice; and we are delighted to be a part of this fraternity.

My quarterly newsletter contains articles, competitions, giveaways, short stories, book news, and recommendations. Simply register here. 

Find out more about my books here at: www.vaseemkhan.com

This article is one of a series of 50. Together they explore the history and culture of India from her most ancient civilisations to the nation’s ambitious space programme. All 50 articles will be collected into a digital book and published in due course. To receive a FREE copy of the book, simply register for my newsletter here.

Jazz. A musical form considered by some as the hippest yet invented by humankind, by others as tuneless noise. Merriam Webster defines it as “American music developed from ragtime and blues and characterized by propulsive syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, varying degrees of improvisation, and often deliberate distortions of pitch and timbre.”

That definition goes a long way to explaining why jazz is an acquired taste. But for those who follow it, it has a rhythm and a beauty all its own.

What few will argue with is that the birthplace of jazz is recognised as New Orleans, in the southern American state of Louisiana, around the beginning of the twentieth century. The greatest names of the genre have hailed from the city known as the ‘Big Easy’, including Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Harry Connick Jr., and Kermit Ruffins.

Given this provenance, it is often surprising to many to discover that a city half-way around the world, a city once heralded by the British empire as the Gateway to India – namely, Bombay – enjoyed its own jazz era, a musical legacy that is today dimly remembered and has flown somewhat under the radar of those chronicling the history of India’s ‘city of dreams’.

Jazz arrived in Bombay in the 1930s, crashing into the city’s five-star hotel ballrooms and upmarket cafes via live band performances, and into homes through the advent of phonograph records. The Bombay of that era was a cosmopolitan city, a good time city, India’s cultural and showbiz capital, with a diverse population drawn from all corners of the country, and a significant contingent of westerners.

With the country embroiled in an increasingly urgent and volatile national independence movement, Bombay remained, to some extent, in its own bubble.

Catering to the foreign residents of India’s premier port city were establishments that provided music and entertainment tailored to remind them of home. House orchestras were common, as were big band sets, cabarets, and ballroom dances.

Encouraged by such culturally welcoming attitudes, famous jazz musicians began to tour India, introducing the genre to the elite set.

In 1935, jazz legend Leon Abbey brought a musical troupe to Bombay, forming a resident band at the Taj Hotel. Soon, hotel ballrooms and nightclubs became jazz hubs where Europeans could mix freely with the Indian upper classes, as well as politicians, company men, and aristocrats. In many ways, these hotel jazz rooms became a means of shutting out the world outside, which was becoming an ever more precarious place for foreigners.

The epicentre of the city’s jazz scene was Bombay’s famous Churchgate Street (now Veer Nariman Road). This bustling thoroughfare became home to numerous clubs, hotels and cafes all employing their own jazz musicians: a dizzying array of piano-fronted groups, trios, quartets, and solo saxophonists.

Once jazz became a mainstay of the local scene, Indian musicians quickly took to the new musical form and made it their own, so much so that it soon began to feature in soundtracks for Bollywood’s conveyor belt of Hindi language films. Following independence in 1947, jazz’s popularity was maintained by this assimilation of the genre into the film industry.

The Bombay love affair with jazz continued well into the sixties and early seventies – with Indian musicians such as Remo Fernandes even recording their own brand of ‘Indo-jazz’ – until finally petering out as modernity overtook the country.

Nevertheless, for those who know their history, Bombay’s jazz years are another reminder of how the city has taken on board influences from around the world, continually adding to its colourful mosaic.

My latest novel, The Dying Day, is set in India, in the 1950s, and features India’s first female police detective, Persis Wadia, as she investigates the disappearance of one of the world’s great treasures, a 600-year-old copy of Dante’s The Divine Comedy stored at Bombay’s Asiatic Society. Soon bodies begin to pile up… Available from bookshops big and small and online. To see buying options please click here.  

This article is one of a series of 50 that I will be publishing on my website. Together these pieces explore the history and culture of India from her most ancient civilisations to the nation’s ambitious space programme. You can read all 50 pieces here.

All 50 articles will be collected into a digital book and published in due course. To receive a FREE copy of the book, simply register for my newsletter here. The newsletter goes out every three months and contains updates on book releases, articles, competitions, giveaways, and lots of other interesting stuff.