About The Book
Lalli, retired police detective, is one of the most endearing characters in Indian crime writing. Adept as much at making the best marmalade in the world as at fixing the nastiest conspirator, she is India's answer to Miss Marple, a woman with the sharpest pair of ears and eyes for miles-Livemint In this gripping collection of seven stories, Lalli-sixty, silver-haired and tough as nails-solves some of the strangest cases of her career. A face keeps reappearing in unlikely places, until a crime of jealousy committed long ago is revealed. Letters from a dead woman hint at a murder that may or may not have happened. A hate-fuelled book-burning claims a life in horrific fashion; and a serial killer turns up in the studio of a famous fashion designer. A suicide in a Mumbai suburb turns out to be something far more sinister; and an innocuous desk ornament becomes a clue to a crime most artistically executed. Finally, for connoisseurs of crime fiction, the curtains come down with a story about lost love and a subtle, surprising revenge. Sometimes, even the committed crime fiction reader, like a cop who has seen too many corpses begins to tire of the genre. That's probably a good time to read Kalpana Swaminathan...I found great joy in Murder in Seven Acts.. [A] great cast of Bombay people flit through these pages. There is no super criminal here, but humans soured by greed jealousy and lust. Despite the vast city, whose inner mythm Lalli always attuned to, Swaminathan teaches you to listen to the intimate and the human
About The Author
Kalpana Swaminathan lives in Mumbai, a few streets away from her detective Lalli. Since Cryptic Death (1997), Lalli has appeared in six novels. Swaminathan's other books include the novels Ambrosia for Afters and Bougainvillea House and the short-story collection Venus Crossing, which won the Crossword Fiction Award in 2009.
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