A mystery story enveloped in a social drama introduced P.K. Basu, the
lawyer sleuth of Narayan Sanyal. Also introduced in the same novel, were the
Tommy & Tuppence of Bengali mystery story – Kaushik and Sujata. Infact, the
story revolved more around Sujata than on anybody else with Kaushik playing a
significant role in it. P.K. Basu entered the drama at a very later stage, that
too in the capacity of an investigating lawyer with a client about whom the author
remained curiously silent, though it can be logically concluded who it might
be.
The story is about the civil engineer-cum-researcher Mr. Chatterjee,
foster father to Sujata. Mr. Chatterjee made a breakthrough inventing a cheaper
hollow block with a strength of the traditional blocks for construction. But a
curious ailment took his life just on the very night he documented his
research. It was the prudence of Sujata who could hide the documents from the
clutches of the greedy industrialists and politicians but at a cost of being
detained at her home. As she used all her wisdom to prevent the research papers
from reaching the wrong hands a curious rush of events made all her calculations
go awry. From then onwards the story takes a tremendous pace and the author’s
magnificent way of story telling keeps the readers glued with climactic
courtroom drama and a sensational revelation in an apparently social gathering.
But there are certain very disappointing aspects
of the novel. The first is a very prolonged introduction of the story cluttered
with poems that, though initially felt relevant but finally loses its
implications. Second is among the several mysteries that remained unanswered,
the most important one was the death of Mr. Chatterjee whose cause was not
revealed at all. Thirdly was the extensive use of civil engineering terms that
once again makes it shelved for its fullest enjoyment for a certain class of
people.
