Arjun Chandra Kathpalia seeks to redefine the young adult reading market with his new age crime thriller, says Kritika Dua
If you have enjoyed watching Jagga Jasoos, a fun-filled, whodunnit film in which actor Ranbir Kapoor essayed the titular role of an oddball detective, you may have just sensed a new pulse of reading. It’s time to enter the world of the comic detective novel. Sixteen-year-old Arjun Chandra Kathpalia has made the literary shift with his debut novel Juni Dagger: Murders in Meraupatnam.
The book revolves around a 40-year-old detective named Juni Dagger who solves murder cases in the sleepy town of Meraupatnam with a laidback calmness as easy as his wit and love of food. He doesn’t crash race cars or brandish a weapon but is an adventure junkie.
Says Arjun of his experiment, “The young adult reading market is very fluid right now. Young readers have been influenced by particular books from the West and are delving into varied content. My book not only incorporates different cultures and ethnicities, it’s set in a place alienated from the rest of the world where people belonging to different cultures can intermesh, truly interact with each other by understanding and respecting each other’s differences. That’s not a rebellious space but an alternative world.”
Talking about juggling school and writing fiction, he says, “Managing studies with writing was not easy. That’s why it took me two years to finish it. But I managed time pretty well. I started working on this novel during my free time – while accompanying my mother to my sister’s ballet class or by skipping video games.” Juggling with studies proved to be beneficial as it gave him more time to think of better ideas of developing the plot line.
An avid fiction reader, he is interested in computer science and is currently preparing for his board exam. Where did he get the idea of making his hero a foodie and an adventure seekerIJ “Most of the detectives are archetypes. I wanted mine to be high on life. Juni Dagger is very serious about his job but why can’t he be quirky and fun on the sideIJ Crime detection, thrills keep him taut, he must have something to unwind. He is different from everyone else as he is flawed like normal people. The realism gives him a better perspective in untangling a mystery,” explains Arjun.
There are several scenes in the novel where Juni Dagger goes on his food escapades, exploring the new culinary joints. He eats to think and to celebrate. He is not run-of-the-mill.
Arjun likes the classic crime thrillers, Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle being his favourites. Simply because they have detailed character studies. But the novel that prodded him to write was The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino.
Arjun feels that reinvention is most possible in the crime fiction space as this genre will never vanish. “It will never reach a saturation point as everybody loves a good crime story. I have not come across anyone who doesn’t like crime fiction or finds it boring. It will always have a high sale value,” he adds.