Book Review: It Takes a Murder

… a murder is written into your life at the very beginning.

Author: Anu Kumar ISBN: 9789350094945 Binding: Paperback Publisher: Hachette India Date of Publication: 2012 Number of Pages: Approx 290 with cover

Murder never happens in a day – it follows its own timeline. When Gautam Dogra is found murdered in his study one afternoon in the small hill station of Brooks Town, the police dismiss it as a relatively simple case. But Charlotte Hyde knows well that a murder never happens in a day- it follows its own timeline. As Charlotte begins telling the story of Dogra’s death, it soon becomes clear that his story can only be fully understood in the light of many other stories. As Kerketta, Charlotte’s old retainer, always said, a murder is written into your life at the very beginning …

Inside the pages of this book with an attractive cover, a brilliant title and clever blurb, Anu Kumar inspects the impacts of political climes on personal lives and narrates interconnected stories of multiple characters with the background of a murder in a small town. Brilliant and lyrical prose, poetic in style but simple in form creates lush description of the setting bringing both the town and the residents to life. The author deserves applause for her effort at analyzing the characters in this darkly lyrical and slyly ambiguous account of love, loss and fury. Unfortunately however, the title or the blurb may mislead the reader and set false expectations and disappoint. It Takes a Murder is not a typical crime fiction instead the book surpasses the boundary of the genre of crime fiction and settles as an elegantly crafted literary fiction that has murder as the background. I would say that this is a successful example of literary crime fiction where the crime gradually subsides at the background and beauty of evocative prose supersedes creating a lasting impression.

Good read. I had received the review copy from Hachette India. Thank you Hachette for giving me this opportunity. You can buy this book at amazon or at flipkart in case you live in India.

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