The perfect crime read for your next holiday!

HarperCollins India  is delighted to announce the upcoming release of

ELA’S UNFINISHED BUSINESS by  Gayatri

 

‘Riveting, vivid, unputdownable.’ – Kiran Manral

‘[A] richly described world which immerses you in a small hill station called Beri-shola – this is a murder mystery written in a refreshing style. This unusual book not only entertains but also teaches you things about yourself.’ – Preeti Shenoy

 

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About the Book

On the surface, Beri Shola appears to be a quiet, charming hill town dotted with boarding schools and tourist traps. Like many such remnants of the colonial Raj across India, it is steeped in history and eccentric traditions. Its locals are a hodgepodge from across the country that Beri Shola accepts as its own.

Piu, a forty-something therapist with a penchant for magazine quizzes, has left her old life behind to set up practice here. Sure, business isn’t booming, but she has a variety of patients and an ‘it’s complicated’ love life that keep her suitably busy.

Then, a week before the much-anticipated annual flower show, beautiful and well-connected Rose is murdered and a new patient, Ela, stumbles into Piu’s office, certain that she’s murdered someone. And life in Beri Shola begins to unravel.

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Talking about the book, Gayatri Jayaraman says, ‘‘I’m a huge fan of the tradition of women mystery writers, from Agatha Christie to Patricia Highsmith and Caroline Graham as well as the Japanese honkaku and shin honkaku traditions. Between these, I felt the need to create a voice that played with questioning reality but in a way that was uniquely our own, Indian, in the way RK Narayan once had… The more I watched people, first as a journalist and then as a therapist, I realized we each occupy an absurd and surreal mindscape that drives us to act in quirky and irrational ways that makes perfect sense to us. Each of our lives becomes a cryptic puzzle only we have the capacity to solve. And the only clue we have is hidden in the depths of our minds. Is the world a mystery or is the way we see it one? Does the external unlock the internal or vice versa? Trip over a dead body or two and you begin to find out…’

Poulomi Chatterjee, Publisher at HarperCollins India, adds, ‘What I loved about Ela’s Unfinished Business when I read it was how expertly (and insidiously) Gayatri’s storytelling takes us into a microcosm that seems idyllic and comforting, and then shocks us with the twists the story takes. Gayatri’s insights on the crevices of the human mind are compelling, and the pace and unravelling of the central puzzle perfect for fans of crime and suspense novels.’

 

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About the Author

Gayatri is a therapist and founder of Shamah. She is a poet, author, mental health columnist, an agony aunt, and has worked in the Indian media for over twenty-two years. She grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, Mumbai and Kodaikanal, India, and now lives in Mysore.

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For review copies, interviews, excerpts or more information, please write to: sohela.singh@harpercollins.co.in

 

Paperback | 260 pp | Rs 399 | Releasing 7 July 2023