The
Waiter, by Ajay Chowdhury.
London writer Chowdhury is the winner of the inaugural Harvill Secker-Bloody Scotland crime writing award – not bad for a debut novelist who ‘kicked around for ten years’ the idea of a disgraced Kolkata detective moving to London, before turning his thoughts into a suspenseful, well-plotted story from which Book Two has just been published (the Fates and Covid willing).
Ex-Detective Kamil Rahman has been forced to leave his
Kolkata home thanks to his utter disgrace in digging too deep into his first
big murder case; sadly, by trying to
emulate his remote, austere father, retired police commissioner Adil’s
impossibly high principles, he has exposed unbelievable levels of graft and
corruption – nothing new about that, except that his investigations (even when
forcefully ordered by his boss to look the other way) reveal the rot at the
highest level. He is sacked from his
position – on charges of bribery and corruption(!) – then informed that it
would be better if he left the country.
If he knows what’s good for him.
So much for principles, thinks Kamil, as he waits tables
in family friend Saibal’s Indian restaurant in London. Life couldn’t get much worse, he thinks, as
the family prepares to cater for the 60th birthday of Rakesh,
millionaire family friend and benefactor – ‘I worked my way up from Kolkata’s
slums, now it’s my chance to help my friends!’ – and Kamil prepares for a night
of mindless boredom filling people’s glasses and plates, only to be shocked by
the fury displayed by Rakesh when he sees Kamil, who has never met him, then by
a hysterical phone call from Rakesh’s young trophy wife at the end of the
night, urging the restaurant family to return and help her, for Rakesh had
suffered ‘a terrible accident!’ Which
turned out to be no accident, but murder most foul.
To make matters worse,
Kamil can’t resist examining the crime scene before the police arrive, taking
pictures of various interesting anomalies – then inadverdently polluting the
crime scene, almost making himself a suspect to the police. So much for his ‘detection’ skills: maybe a waiter’s job is all he deserves!
Mr Chowdhury does a great job of portraying the teeming,
vital, colourful society within a society in East London; his character drawings are a delight and his
plotting, composed of flash-backs to Kamil’s initial disgrace followed by his
current situation, is very good indeed.
Most of all, the reader is entertained,
and that’s not easy to do in this genre. Book #2, ‘The Cook’, has just been
published. Can’t wait! FIVE STARS.
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