Reprinted from Green Man Review.
Six Suspects is billed as the eagerly awaited second novel from the author of Slumdog Millionaire. So let me confess before I begin this review that I have neither read Slumdog Millionaire (apparently also known as Q & A) nor have I seen the very popular film based on the novel. That’s probably just as well; as you shall see, I don’t think that the two novels have much in common.
As its title suggests, Six Suspects is a murder mystery. It’s set in contemporary India, primarily in the northern province of Uttar Pradesh. As the title also suggests rather nicely, the narrative actually focuses on the six people who are the primary suspects in the murder. It’s an interesting plot device that definitely worked for me. I read and watch so many murder mysteries that I always appreciate the rare example that pushes some of the more hide-bound conventions. And Six Suspects definitely does that!
Six Suspects is also very funny in a dark sort of way — a trait not at all typical of murder mysteries. For that author Vikas Swarup deserves recognition, as well. Swarup, incidentally, writes novels as an avocation. A native of Uttar Pradesh, he serves in his country’s foreign service, presently posted as Consul-General in Osaka, Japan. A disclaimer in the front of Six Suspects notes that the views expressed in this novel do not reflect those of the Indian Government or of the author in his official capacity. Some of his views of government officials are, to put it mildly, quite cynical. In fact, that is the source of much (but not all) of the black humor in Six Suspects.
I could tell you a lot about this novel without the risk of spoiling the surprises for you because Swarup does such a splendid job of holding the surprises back to the very last pages. I found myself literally rereading those last few pages several times just to get the full impact of the final resolution of the murder.
But I digress. Let me tell you something about the story so you can decide if it’s your cuppa tea. The murder is announced and described in a news report at the start of the novel. The victim is Vivek “Vicky” Rai, a local businessman and playboy who has just been acquitted in the murder of a barmaid — a crime he very obviously committed. He celebrates his victory over the legal system with a big party at his house. He is shot to death. In a police roundup that happens right after the party (so quickly that one wonders if the police were in the neighborhood already), six people are found with guns in their possession. They become the suspects in the murder.
The next six chapters provide the reader with backstories on the six suspects; the six chapters after that provide details on possible motives each would have for killing Rai. No one can really say anything kind about the victim. It seems that whoever topped him off did the world (and certainly the province) a very big favor.
Who are these suspects? Let me tell you a little about each of them just to pique your interest. One is Mohan Kumar, recently retired Chief Secretary of the province, a corrupt bureaucrat if ever there was one. His life changes when the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi enters into him at a major public event. I mean that — the old bastard really is possessed — although he comes across as though he is experiencing a split personality! Sure, the Gandhi aspect is wonderful, but Mohan Kumar is even more obnoxious than usual when his own personality returns, which it does at various times.
Mohan Kumar isn’t the only old bastard in the list of suspects, by the way. The other is the victim’s father, Jagannath Rai, the Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh, who appears to be even more corrupt and vicious than Kumar. All I could think of as I read about the sleazy deals these old guys cut is the Showtime series Brotherhood, in which one brother is a politician and the other brother is a gangster, but they are both pretty reprehensible.
There’s only one woman on the list of suspects, Bollywood starlet Shabnam Saxena, an attractive and very vain woman in her early twenties. She comes across sounding like a Barbie doll crossed with that dreadful former Miss California, Carrie Prejean.
The most annoying suspect is the American, Larry Page, a forklift operator from Waco, Texas who travels to India in hopes of marrying a woman he “met” through one of those international “pen pals” programs. He is about the dumbest human being I’ve ever encountered in a novel, which I suppose is intended to make him sound funny, but doesn’t. His humor is extreme cornball — and it seems that Swarup had difficulty staying in character for Larry’s first-person narratives. They occasionally sound like they were written by someone a lot more intelligent and sensitive than Larry is meant to be.
Only two of the suspects come across as sympathetic characters. One is Eketi, a member of a tribal culture from Little Andaman Island (part of an archipelago in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of the Indian subcontinent) who leaves his homeland in search of a sacred rock that was stolen by an outsider. He is very short and has very black skin. He takes his mission very seriously and is quite naïve about the ways of other peoples.
The other sympathetic character (and the one who is most akin to the characters portrayed in Slumdog Millionaire) is Munna, a young college graduate who ekes out a living stealing and re-selling mobile phones. He lives with his mother and a young woman named Champi inside a temple in the Mehrauli neighborhood of Delhi. Champi is a victim of the Bhopal gas leak — she is blind and has some facial and other physical deformities.
As Swarup develops the plot across the individual stories of the six suspects, the reader becomes aware of connections among them that at first appear to be entirely coincidental, but that help to provide the rationale for their presence at Vicky Rai’s party and to explain why each of them might indeed have wanted to take a shot at Vicky.
Six Suspects is on the long side for a mystery novel, running over 450 pages in length. However, the type is large, there’s a lot of white space on the pages, and a great deal of the story is told through dialog, one-sided phone conversations, diary entries or news updates. So it’s a fast read, just not the kind of book you would necessarily want to carry with you on the commuter train.
(Minotaur Books, 2008)
