Murder in Melur

Murder most foul indeed and most intriguing but so many other aspects of this extraordinary book are even more intriguing and I kept turning the pages not just to find out who did it but to follow the fate really the coming of age of the extremely sympathetic hero caught up in the political whirlpools of the 1970s in South India - Wendy Doniger.Velan saw the shape of a man in the dark but not the machete gripped in his hand.Set in a small town in South India in the early 1970s Murder in Melur is the story of Vijayan a confused idealist who is buffeted by the politics of the period the Rationalist Dravidian and Communist movements in the Tamil country as well as the incipient civil war in Sri Lanka. His idealism however is frustrated not only by social convention and injustice but also by his own inertia and self-absorption.But when his friend Velan a political activist is mysteriously murdered it gives Vijayan an opportunity to put his ideas into practice but also leads him into a chilling web of deceit and political intrigue from which it seems he cannot escape.As he digs deeper into Velans life to look for answers Velans murderer lurks in the background and appears to be following Vijayan. But the questions keep piling up as the suspense builds. Why did Velan have to die? Is his killer the mysterious stranger with the limp or could it be someone closer home? Taut and well-paced Murder in Melurknits together the lives of ordinary people including folklore with the larger social and political issues of the day.