A ghost that haunts his own manor; five deaths and the hunt for the killer is on

Crime fiction has been called a difficult genre. After reading some contemporary crime thrillers by young authors, I have begun to understand why. The focus has shifted from narrative and research to script writing and visual appeal. This is what you find in The Zamindar’s Ghost as well. It is a quick read with little to surprise you. You could easily finish the book in about three hours.

Set in beautiful Ooty during the British Raj, the book has some references to the city and the era. However, it does not touch anything in detail, not even a para. It moves like a movie that has lost the plot.

Rich boy and poor orphan girl meet and fall in love. The rich boy’s father does not want the alliance to go further and lures the girl out of the town. He gets the boy married to a rich girl and the poor girl is left with a bastard child. The poor girl, then goes on a rampage, and eventually ends up in prison. Then becomes a samaritan by gifting the money she has taken from her murdered lover, to the orphanage where her son is placed. In between the main plot, is a triangle of friends, a ghost, greedy men. How the saga of revenge and death moves is uninteresting, even though the author has tried to keep the suspense till the end.

If you are a thriller junkie, then you would have seen the characters and the episodic narratives in many old movies. This book has just pieced different versions of crime thrillers.

The characters are not fleshed out and there are many loose ends in the way the story takes off. For instance, the ghostly and ghastly apparition of Zamindar Digvijay Rana keeps trying to send a message to all the people it knows and somehow trusts. He led a life of debauchery, cruelty and arrogance. But it’s a scary ghost, something that pops out of a Ramsay Brothers movie (which weren’t scary at all). It leaves no impact.

It is unclear why Miss Sharvani Mehra, an old matron who runs the Rana Orphanage, is so involved in everything. Of mixed roots, she too has led an adventurous youth with the ‘Richie Rich’ of the town. Her bedroom stories are an open secret. She bedded the Zamindar and his aide Rai Bahadur, who is eventually thrown out of the manor after the Zamindar’s untimely death. For a woman who lives on charity and understands the dark areas of life, it’s surprising that she is taken in by the seemingly docile Ishita Dhiman, who turns out to be a villain. Sharvani has been shown a vulnerable side with her love for orphaned children, but Ishita is the cold-hearted treacherous schemer.

Orphans face mutliple emotional and social issues. As they grow into adults, these issues can take other proportions, especially when they have no mentorship or guidance. The materialistic and unreliable nature of situations comes to the forefront and none of these sensitivities have been talked about. In fact, the story of revenge, prostitution, networking with the mafia gets just few pages in the end. There is a chain of deaths, but the men who hide dark secrets remain quiet and eventually die as well.

The book is full of toxic characters and their manipulative scheming. The zamindar’s lost son, Arjun Rana, comes back to the town and then the family which saved him is burnt alive in their homes. He is murdered and thrown amid a hall full of people partying.

Sharvani isn’t constable Tej Bahadur’s favourite person, in fact he detests her. Yet, he lets her help him out in the investigation. In the middle of this investigation, she is sitting with Ishita Dhiman, Arjun’s close friend, and eating strawberry buttercream cake that was specially made for the party.

The story lacks credibility and the language is banal. In fact, sentences such as ‘God seems to be urinating on us’ have an adverse effect. The ‘F’ word has also been used.

Arjuna Rana’s wife, Archana Rana, is an orgy freak and her only role in the story is to bed the firang gardener, Eric. He turns out to be an assassin.  

Alexander Stephen, the Brit, runs a sleazy hotel chain and the ‘Zamindar has broken the young girls’ who please the men there. Surprisingly, this Brit doesn’t seem to have any power over the town in Colonial India!

The rain seems to be the predominant factor as far as weather goes, yet it does nothing to impede or hasten the search for the killer. While the blurb does make the book sound interesting, the cover does nothing for the reader. The ghost’s message of safeguarding his legacy does make sense in the end though.

Book Details

Publisher: ‎ HarperCollins India  
Language: ‎ English
Paperback: ‎ 248 pages
Price: Rs 299, Kindle edition available

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