Cut Like Wound - Anita Nair

A brutal psychological thriller unlike any of her previous books, Cut Like Wound by Anita Nair is set during Ramadan in the steamy heat of Bangalore, taking the form of a police procedural, with detectives tracking a serial killer through the teeming streets and seedy back alleys of the city. This was my 34th of 2021.

 

As the month of Ramzan begins around the world, in Bangalore, India a young male heeds the words of the Goddess to cross-dress as a female. He admires his transformation into beautiful Bhuvana before leaving his home to visit the bazaars where he expects to meet true love. A man flirts with Bhuvana until an interloper warns him that the woman he admires is a male in female clothing. Angry as lust turns to disgust he insults the transgender and the interloper. When he recognizes who the transgender is, he panics just before his throat is sliced. Before leaving the killer arranges for a cleanup.

Inspector Borei Gowda, a splendidly grumpy, hard-drinking, deeply flawed character whose chaotic home life includes an absent wife, an estranged son and an enigmatic mistress. Despite his brilliant detective work, Gowda's disdain for authority has led to a posting in a backwater district of Bangalore. He is roused from his apathetic torpor by a series of grisly murders on his patch; seemingly unrelated men whose throats have been cut with a manja – a glass-coated kite string. The author's hypnotic writing plunges us into world at once deeply conservative and daringly transgressive; we are presented with policemen perennially at odds with their own organization, local politicians who mix corruption with paternalistic altruism, and transgendered sex-workers in search of affection and tenderness

He has a reputation for incredible investigative skills, and it's those skills that rookie inspector Santosh hopes to absorb. Santosh is in luck; just as he arrives at the precinct, passersby find a body burning in an abandoned car. The autopsy reveals that the man's throat was cut by an unusual, unidentified weapon. When two more bodies turn up with the same wound, Gowda campaigns to investigate the murders as serial killings, upsetting the administration's denial that such killers operate in India. But a senior officer friend secretly hands Gowda unofficial reins, and he and Santosh hunt a killer incongruously connected to both local politics and Bangalore's eunuch subculture.

A surprise reunion with his first love reminds him of who he used to be in his student days. Perhaps that's why, while his colleagues believe that the deaths of a few “eunuchs” are not worth wasting police resources on, Gowda is determined to protect the city's oppressed transgender community from a self-hating murderer, no matter how many corrupt politicians he has to make enemies of in the process.

It is only after about the first hundred pages that the investigation actually begins.  The story slows down, as if to mimic the pace of the investigation.  There are also references to some sensational crimes reported in the media in recent years. At the crux of every great mystery novel is that penny-drop moment where the revelation leaves you cold with shock. In A Cut Like Wound, the penny hits you on your head like a golf ball.

The climax, which is well paced over the last thirty pages of the novel, is especially good. In a complicated urban world, where identity is faked, deceit constant and money desperately needed, role-playing and all forms of prostitution prevail Gowda prefers to travel those streets on his Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycle. Another reason to find this detective irresistible.

Gowda investigates a series of homicides that make no sense to him as they seem like angry crimes of passion yet cleansed by an apparent cool head. This is an intriguing Indian police procedural in which the official serial killing inquiry takes a back seat to the deep look inside the souls of the fully developed lead characters Gowda and Bhuvana; with the latter owning the storyline. 

This novel asks hard questions about what it means to be a male or female. What are the differences? Why would anyone be a hijira? Why is Bhuvana so irresistible? It also explores the boundaries of family connections and how, in India, that effects political corruption and many branches of the government and law enforcement. The India of the novel is both exotic to Western minds but also familiar. The book is action and suspense filled with contrasts and conflicts between the two sleuths.