Regular readers of this column will know I am a sucker for a “small community rocked by a horrible crime” story, particularly if it takes place in a setting unfamiliar to me. (See Jane Harper, who does this for Australia.) Now I’ve a new writer to shout about: Nilanjana Roy’s Black River (Pushkin Vertigo) takes place in the small village of Teetarpur, just outside Delhi. “There is nothing Teetarpur is famous for,” writes Roy. “The village lies at the edge of the Delhi-Haryana border, an hour’s drive down silent, forested roads covered in powdered summer dust. Its soul has remained half a century behind the capital.” Munia is a shy, sweet eight-year-old, “a brown scrap, so easily overlooked”. But she is the apple of her single father Chand’s eye. Almost as soon as the book starts, we see her murdered – hanged from a jamun tree – and then watch the village turn into a mob as her corpse is discovered, with suspicion falling upon a homeless man who was with her body. Sub-inspector Ombir Singh investigates, tries to prevent mob justice and, with his limited resources, digs to the core of a crime with long tendrils and dark origins. Roy brings rural India and Delhi to vivid life as much as she does her characters. The death of Munia is shocking and devastating: it is the mystery that drives this thriller but also its heart, as Roy tells of Chand’s prior life, and his love for his daughter. Riveting.
