look forward to reading new fiction, mystery or otherwise, by Anu Kumar because, unlike many of her contemporaries, she offers an unpredictable yet delightful balance of literary tropes and twists of fate, fleshed-out characters and a thoughtful window into South Asian history. Although her research is thorough, her characters and their activities do not overburden the reader. In her mysteries, the focus of the prose quickly shifts to the good, the bad and the grey areas in between.

Her mysteries are not written in the same vein as Crime and Punishment or The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. However, she possesses a rare comic touch and a lightness in her treatment of human emotion that makes reading her mysteries a pleasure. Take, for example, Anu Kumar’s previous Bombay mystery, in which the great American satirist Mark Twain is kidnapped. As readers holds their breath waiting to find out whether the American guest will be freed unharmed, they also become invested in the relationship between two lovers, one of mixed race and the other white. When the reader finally closes the book with a sigh of relief, they do so with a lingering sweet ache. The iconic image of the great writer permeates the novel; the mystery unfolds through pages that gently crackle with subdued erotic imagery.

The mystery under review is slightly different in that regard, yet equally engaging.

As the title suggests, the central event that triggers several other narratives is funny only in a macabre sense: a plague is caused by rats arriving on the shores of Bombay aboard British ships. Anu Kumar’s genius lies in how quickly she balances this repulsive image with the theft of bicycles.

Anu Kumar situates her mystery within the real-life Bombay plague epidemic, which claimed the lives of a large number of the city’s residents. The narrative explores the conflict arising from the native population’s distrust of its colonial masters, even when the policies enacted by the colonial authorities were intended to protect the local population, though implemented without sensitivity.

Maya Barton, a young Anglo-Indian woman, is attracted to Henry Baker, the American consul from Chicago. Maya and Henry are characters from the previous mystery, The Kidnapping of Mark Twain. The attraction between them has been mutual. Maya writes for the Bombay Gazette, edited by Mr Beemon, who, along with Charlotte and Edith, both doctors, forms part of her support network. There are also loyal servants who play minor but crucial roles as Maya tries to solve the theft of bicycles and its connection to the plague.

As luck would have it, Maya finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a police constable impounds her bicycle. In a nod to colonial-era bureaucracy, the bicycle cannot be traced or recovered. To add another layer of absurdity, the stolen bicycle is sighted here and there, further piquing the reader’s curiosity.

As is often the case in the mystery genre, the secrets are eventually uncovered, whether by determination, luck or chance. It emerges that the constable who confiscated the bicycle, and who is most likely behind the theft of two others, one belonging to Henry and the other to one of the doctors, has been acting on the orders of a villainous figure named Satarkar. Satarkar is connected to the Native Society, which is deeply suspicious of British attempts to contain the plague. If one considers the plot alone, the novel is both instructive and delightful. But a writer of Anu Kumar’s calibre elevates it beyond the conventions of the average mystery novel.

Colonial rule, which imposed law and order, re-engineered culture from the top down. It separated the ruler from the ruled and injected a heavy dose of distrust towards modernity among various sections of the native population of India, regardless of religion or ethnicity. It is not unheard of to find people in Pakistan resisting state-led attempts to eradicate polio. I remember some people believing the propaganda directed against government-run bread plants, as though they were part of a conspiracy to impose birth control.

Although the British left nearly 80 years ago, the effects of their policies remain deeply entrenched because, when change is introduced inorganically, things become distorted, a typical postcolonial condition, also known as regressive development. When the British wished to impose their will, they often did so without being sensitive to the needs and apprehensions of the native population, ransacking homes and grain stores or demolishing infrastructure. Such policies, both before and during the plague, became a source of distrust and hatred towards the white rulers and their native collaborators.

For this reader, the metaphor of the plague caused by rats is interesting, to say the least. It is common sense that modernity and modernisation would have arrived in India regardless of the advent of British colonial rule, as it was only a matter of time before educational and technological advances crossed ethnic and national boundaries. It is also undeniable that the poverty, backwardness and hatred to which India fell prey were largely the result of British policies designed to maintain colonial rule.

Anu Kumar does a subtle and effective job of showing how social hierarchy shaped Bombay’s landscape during the plague. Englishmen stood at the top, followed by other Europeans and white Americans, then people of mixed race, the Brahmans and the ashrafiya and finally the rest of the population, most of them poor, illiterate and uncivilised.

There’s an interesting strain of love and rebellion running through the novel. Not only do the natives retaliate, even when they are wrong or misinformed, but people also elope for love, embodied by feisty women who know how to take risks.

The backdrop against which one reads Love and Crime in the Time of Plague is that not only did Maya Barton, who is of mixed race, run away from home to join a theatre troupe, but her mother, a Kashmiri woman whose Muslim background is only lightly alluded to, also left with Reverend Barton, only to disappear yet again, though no one knows with whom. That, perhaps, is for Anu Kumar to explore in one of her future books.

The novel is set at a time when British power is at its zenith. Without the benefit of hindsight, an Indian subject of the empire could scarcely have imagined that its demise as a colonial power was just around the corner. America and Americans, on the other hand, are seen in a softer light, as beacons of freedom and democracy, entrepreneurship and love. The plague of British colonialism is pitted against the backwardness of the Indian masses.

Caught in between are minorities such as Mr Beemon, a Parsi; Maya, an Anglo-Indian; Dr Atmaram and the Nawab of Janjira. Considering that Bombay, not yet Mumbai, was the most cosmopolitan city of the period, a true melting pot that remains so to this day, with Hindus and Muslims constituting the largest sections of the population, I was left with a niggling sense of dissatisfaction. While I concede that a novel cannot pack every bit of ethnic or cultural information into its 200-odd pages, I felt that a more robust and bustling portrait of Bombay might have served as a richer backdrop to an otherwise finely written mystery.

In one of those bizarre twists with which human history is replete, Jinnah arrived in Bombay to establish his legal practice and eventually become a political force only a month before the plague broke out in 1896.

Love and Crime in the Time of Plague

Author: Anu Kumar

Publisher: Speaking Tiger

Pages: 296

The reviewer is a librarian and a writer based in San Francisco. His last two novellas were A Footbridge to Hell Called Love and Unsolaced Faces We Meet In Our Dreams. The novella, We Don’t Love Here Anymore, has just been released.