I Met A Man Who Wasn’t There-Sakyajit Bhattacharya (Tr. Arunava Sinha)

Book: I Met A Man Who Wasn’t There
Author: Sakyajit Bhattacharya
Translator: Arunava Sinha
Publisher: Speaking Tiger

I was provided a media copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Would you take up a chance to solve a decades old murder mystery?

Tanaya, a journalist who writes on cold cases, arrives in Darjeeling to investigate the decades-old murder of Amitava Mitra, a young poet. The prime accused was Arun Chowdhury, the victim’s best friend. Arun was released for lack of evidence, and Amitava’s murder has remained unsolved for forty years, the case files buried in the police archives. Tanaya’s investigations take her around the famed hill station, sleepy and mist-wrapped in the monsoons. She interviews a whole cast of characters, including the taciturn Arun Chowdhury, who is a best-selling crime novelist now. She reconstructs the sequence of events that led to the murder and in doing this, comes across an unpublished crime novel written by Amitava himself that has eerie parallels with his own subsequent murder. As she digs deeper, and the clues get more and more twisted, Tanaya realises there was a devious killer at work here, who killed with impunity. And when Darjeeling witnesses yet another murder, she is convinced the killer is still alive, and hunting. Published to critical and popular acclaim in Bengali as Shesh Mrito Pakhi, this is crime fiction at its most sophisticated. Weaving in the politics of 1970s Bengal, the lives of poets and the literary scene of the times into a contemporary story of betrayal, murder and revenge, I Met a Man Who Wasn’t There is the work of a compellingly intelligent and entertaining writer.

There are thrillers that keep you on the edge of your seat, and then there are thrillers that make you get comfortable on the chair and keep turning the pages. Sakyajit’s book firmly falls in the second category. Right from the first page, you are presented this case that seems simple in the first glance, and you are slowly drawn into it from Tanaya’s perspective. As the story moves and you discover the “thriller-inside-a-thriller”, the sleuth inside comes to life and you are suddenly solving both the stories. While Amitava’s novel is revealed slowly, the reader is hungry for it, and honestly, I was in love with Suddhasatwa’s character and how he is presented just like Holmes and Byomkesh, but at the same time there was something very different about him as well. Coming back to the primary novel, the entire story is written beautifully and the mystery is quite complex. Every solution that you come up with turns out to be wrong, and as you journey along with Tanaya, you start feeling complex emotions about the characters, and it is quite difficult to ascertain what is right and what is a misdirect. The storytelling keeps you hooked and the charm of solving the crime keeps you into the book right till the last page. The peak detailing by the author in the book, specially in a few scenes were quite interesting to read. When the reveal happens, I was quite surprised with the cold bloodedness of the crime, and the meticulous nature of the act. The climax is something that is set up perfectly, and it delivers a perfect punch at the end.

Coming to the characters, I liked the way Tanaya’s character has been sketched. The quest for sniffing out the story from the annals of history and the steadfastness has been portrayed perfectly. Arun Chowdhury’s character is layered and I liked that the pendulum between his innocence and guilt keeps swinging to keep you guessing whether he did it or not. Another character that surprised me was that of Siddhartha and how he deals with the entire situation at hand. His eureka moment in the book was something that I really loved, and I link that was executed perfectly.

While we talk about the story and the storytelling, the translation by Arunava is quite well done, and the story does not lose out on the essence and the intent of the author as he would have planned in the original Bengali version. I loved the fact that the language and the storytelling was balanced enough to keep the story intact as well as maintain the language.

The book is a recommendation for anyone looking to pick up a murder mystery and is looking for a book to devour in a single sitting. The book scores a 5/5 for me.

Grab a copy of the book on Amazon India or at a bookstore near you.