Swarup’s Six Suspects opens with a murder. Vicky Rai, a disreputable playboy, is having a party to celebrate getting off on a charge of murdering a bartender. In the middle of the party Rai is shot to death and as the title of the book suggests there are six suspects. Mohan Kumar, retired corrupt Chief Secretary for Uttar Pradesh, who thinks he’s possessed by Mahatma Gandhi. A cell phone thief. The beautiful Bollywood actress Shabnam Saxena. A native of the Andaman islands in search of a sacred relic. A dimwitted American, who thinks he’s marrying Saxena. Finally, Jagannath Rai, Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh and Vicky Rai’s father.
Swarup slowly unwinds the lives and motives of the characters over the course of multiple chapters. These are very complex stories that seem to exist almost independently of the larger plot. For example the American starts out in Texas, where he’s duped by spammers into providing a dowry for a woman he thinks he’s going to marry. To convince him they send him a picture of Shambnam Saxena. Mohan Kumar is accidentally possessed by the spirit of the Gandhi during a disrupted seance. He spends much of his time flipping back and forth between his own corrupt and venal persona and that of Gandhi.
The one thing the suspects all have in common is their connection to the seamy underbelly of Indian life. All the stories highlight the extreme corruption and poverty of India. The cell phone thief lives with his mother and adopted sister in a Hindu monastery. His sister was victim of the Union Carbide Bhopal Gas Disaster and is horribly deformed. Jagannath Rai is in the process of getting a police inspector transferred to the boondocks for arresting one of his henchmen for raping a woman.
By the book’s end you’ve almost forgotten about the death of Vicky Rai you are so caught up in the lives of the suspects themselves. This is an excellent book for anyone who likes complex and intertwining plots. It’s also a window on Indian life and culture from the very top of society to the very bottom.
