Review: Death in Shambles by Stephen Alter
After seeking voluntary retirement from the state police service, Lionel Carmichael returns to his family home in the quaint hill station of Debrakot. He hopes to spend a quiet life there with a few quirky neighbours for company. However, that is not to be. There is a double murder at Shambala Villa or “Shambles”, as it has come to be known due to its dilapidated condition, and his former colleague SHO Thapliyal needs his help. Carmichael visits Shambles and finds Reuben Sabharwal, a self-styled godman, lying in a pool of blood while an unknown woman in a pale green sari hangs by a noose.
Before this, Debrakot had zero crimes. The biggest one was the stealing of 200 metres of copper cable. The thief was caught as he tried to sell it off to a scrap dealer.
Unsurprisingly, Badlu, Carmichael’s faithful helper, urges him to stay away from Shambles as “a lot of strange things happen there” and the place is haunted and cursed. Of course, as the murder mystery gets murkier, Carmichael ignores Badlu’s plea and sets his sights on finding the killers.
Death in Shambles takes forward the story of young Carmichael, who made Debrakot his home in Neglected Lives, Alter’s first novel published in 1978. Incidentally, the fictitious hill station is a “literary refraction” of Mussoorie, the author’s own home town.
During his investigation, Carmichael rediscovers Debrakot, the town he had left four-and-a-half decades earlier to become a cop. One clue leads to another, but Carmichael is not a man in a hurry. He makes it a point to continue with his afternoon naps, a habit he had picked up during his long police career and read books to take his mind off the case.
He too has a back story. His final posting as DIG hadn’t ended well. He was suspended six months before his scheduled retirement “for breaking the nose of a prominent politician”. He had no regrets. “I can still feel my knuckles crunch against the bastard’s nasal cartilage, shoving it up into his sinuses, a satisfying feeling of justice delivered, even if it brought my career to an ignominious end,” he broods on a lazy monsoon morning.
Blissfully disconnected, he feels like “the world beyond his house has been erased”. The nearest concrete road, named Thornfield Lodge after the grand manor house in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, is nearly five kilometres away.
Phone signals, for both his mobile and landline, are poor and if an important message must reach him, a person is sent across. On the odd occasion that his mobile phone does ring, he is startled. Charmichael hates his ringtone, which was chosen by the shopkeeper who sold him the cellphone, but he doesn’t know how to change it.
He then begins gathering information from his neighbours, latching on to every bit of detail. He walks over to Gladys Ahluwalia, his late mother’s friend, who is more than 90 years old, can barely hear, but takes offence if someone raises their voice to speak to her. Her house, Glenwood, lies about a hundred metres above Shambles. Gladys is certain she saw Reuben Sabharwal engaged in a shouting match with a woman with a long braid a day before he died.
She also tells Carmichael that the original owner of Shambles, Rosemary, was convinced that the house was haunted. “She used to tell me that one of the spirits living in the house with her was an Egyptian princess, the daughter of Tutankhamun.”
Carmichael acquaints himself with Debrakot’s new inhabitants and tries to uncover their dirty secrets. He also meets the woman with the long braid, who opens his eyes to how much this picturesque hill station has changed in the last few decades. The new residents have swanky houses and zip around in fancy cars. She introduces him to her friend BK, a content creator, who has a camera crew stationed to capture images of Himalayan birds and animals, clouds and trees, as well as the simple, rural culture of the hills.
“Not everybody is as fortunate as we are to live in a tranquil, secluded place like Debrakot, so we deliver that experience to their laptop and smartphone screens,” BK tells a bewildered Carmichael.
Apparently, BK had hired the murdered self-styled godman, who dabbled in the occult, to create content. Now, he is as flummoxed about the twin murders as everyone else.
As the retired policeman works his way through a web of lies and deceit, a list of suspects and all manner of secrets are revealed. Carmichael once tells his neighbour Gladys, “There are times I feel completely alone, especially when I finish reading a book…The words may run out and a full stop might punctuate the last sentence on the final page, but the story keeps on going…even after you close the book.” That’s the feeling most readers will get after finishing this book.
Stephen Alter is no stranger to readers. The author of more than 15 books, his fictional account of Jim Corbett’s life, In the Jungles of the Night, was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature in 2017. His latest well crafted novel avoids every single crime genre trope. Death in Shambles is a masterclass in layered and understated writing. A must read.
Lamat R Hasan is an independent journalist. She lives in New Delhi.
After seeking voluntary retirement from the state police service, Lionel Carmichael returns to his family home in the quaint hill station of Debrakot. He hopes to spend a quiet life there with a few quirky neighbours for company. However, that is not to be. There is a double murder at Shambala Villa or “Shambles”, as it has come to be known due to its dilapidated condition, and his former colleague SHO Thapliyal needs his help. Carmichael visits Shambles and finds Reuben Sabharwal, a self-styled godman, lying in a pool of blood while an unknown woman in a pale green sari hangs by a noose.
Before this, Debrakot had zero crimes. The biggest one was the stealing of 200 metres of copper cable. The thief was caught as he tried to sell it off to a scrap dealer.
Unsurprisingly, Badlu, Carmichael’s faithful helper, urges him to stay away from Shambles as “a lot of strange things happen there” and the place is haunted and cursed. Of course, as the murder mystery gets murkier, Carmichael ignores Badlu’s plea and sets his sights on finding the killers.
Death in Shambles takes forward the story of young Carmichael, who made Debrakot his home in Neglected Lives, Alter’s first novel published in 1978. Incidentally, the fictitious hill station is a “literary refraction” of Mussoorie, the author’s own home town.
During his investigation, Carmichael rediscovers Debrakot, the town he had left four-and-a-half decades earlier to become a cop. One clue leads to another, but Carmichael is not a man in a hurry. He makes it a point to continue with his afternoon naps, a habit he had picked up during his long police career and read books to take his mind off the case.
He too has a back story. His final posting as DIG hadn’t ended well. He was suspended six months before his scheduled retirement “for breaking the nose of a prominent politician”. He had no regrets. “I can still feel my knuckles crunch against the bastard’s nasal cartilage, shoving it up into his sinuses, a satisfying feeling of justice delivered, even if it brought my career to an ignominious end,” he broods on a lazy monsoon morning.
Blissfully disconnected, he feels like “the world beyond his house has been erased”. The nearest concrete road, named Thornfield Lodge after the grand manor house in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, is nearly five kilometres away.
Phone signals, for both his mobile and landline, are poor and if an important message must reach him, a person is sent across. On the odd occasion that his mobile phone does ring, he is startled. Charmichael hates his ringtone, which was chosen by the shopkeeper who sold him the cellphone, but he doesn’t know how to change it.
He then begins gathering information from his neighbours, latching on to every bit of detail. He walks over to Gladys Ahluwalia, his late mother’s friend, who is more than 90 years old, can barely hear, but takes offence if someone raises their voice to speak to her. Her house, Glenwood, lies about a hundred metres above Shambles. Gladys is certain she saw Reuben Sabharwal engaged in a shouting match with a woman with a long braid a day before he died.
She also tells Carmichael that the original owner of Shambles, Rosemary, was convinced that the house was haunted. “She used to tell me that one of the spirits living in the house with her was an Egyptian princess, the daughter of Tutankhamun.”
Carmichael acquaints himself with Debrakot’s new inhabitants and tries to uncover their dirty secrets. He also meets the woman with the long braid, who opens his eyes to how much this picturesque hill station has changed in the last few decades. The new residents have swanky houses and zip around in fancy cars. She introduces him to her friend BK, a content creator, who has a camera crew stationed to capture images of Himalayan birds and animals, clouds and trees, as well as the simple, rural culture of the hills.
“Not everybody is as fortunate as we are to live in a tranquil, secluded place like Debrakot, so we deliver that experience to their laptop and smartphone screens,” BK tells a bewildered Carmichael.
Apparently, BK had hired the murdered self-styled godman, who dabbled in the occult, to create content. Now, he is as flummoxed about the twin murders as everyone else.
As the retired policeman works his way through a web of lies and deceit, a list of suspects and all manner of secrets are revealed. Carmichael once tells his neighbour Gladys, “There are times I feel completely alone, especially when I finish reading a book…The words may run out and a full stop might punctuate the last sentence on the final page, but the story keeps on going…even after you close the book.” That’s the feeling most readers will get after finishing this book.
Stephen Alter is no stranger to readers. The author of more than 15 books, his fictional account of Jim Corbett’s life, In the Jungles of the Night, was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature in 2017. His latest well crafted novel avoids every single crime genre trope. Death in Shambles is a masterclass in layered and understated writing. A must read.
Lamat R Hasan is an independent journalist. She lives in New Delhi.
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