Anita Nair

Anita Nair is the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of the novels The Better Man, Ladies Coupé, Mistress, Lessons in Forgetting, Idris: Keeper of the Light and Alphabet Soup for Lovers. She has also authored a crime series featuring Inspector Gowda.

Eating Wasps

A mystery novel By Anita Nair

In a small town by the river Nila, a thirty-five year old writer kills herself. No one knows why.

Fifty-two years later, an antique cupboard in a private resort opens to reveal a frightened child. And the mystery begins to unravel.

From the bestselling author of Ladies Coupe comes an unusual new novel about the intensity – and consequences – of desire.

“Anita Nair is a fine writer with a great sense of character… and an eye for telling details. She can move from tender compassion to sensuality to raging hatred… A compelling teller of stories.”

– Hindu Literary Supplement

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from Anita Nair’s new novel Eating Wasps

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Crime Series by Anita Nair

Cut Like Wound

It is the first night of Ramadan. At Shivaji Nagar in the heart of Bangalore, a young male prostitute is killed and burnt alive. It would have stayed as yet another unsolved murder, but for Inspector Borei Gowda, the investigating officer. As bodies begin to pile up one after the other, and it becomes clear that a serial killer is on the prowl, Gowda recognizes a pattern in the killings which no one else does. Even as he negotiates serious mid-life blues, problems with his wife and son, an affair with an ex-girlfriend, and official apathy and ridicule, the killer moves in for the next victim…

Chain of Custody

How is twelve-year-old Nandita’s disappearance connected to the murder of a well-known lawyer? What services has college student Rekha been persuaded to perform by her ‘boyfriend’? Who is the mysterious crime lord lurking just out of sight? And who, just who, is Krishna?It begins as a search for a missing girl, but the case takes a more sinister turn when Inspector Gowda finds himself embroiled in Bangalore’s child-trafficking racket.

Reviews

What People are Saying about this series

“A story that explores the mind of a killer”

“Nair introduces us to a police detective who is commonplace, human, a man one can relate to. Inspector Gowda is 49, going to seed, and often at odds with those around him. Nair weaves a fast paced, engrossing tale of suspense as Gowda and Santosh investigate. More corpses turn up, as do clues, sometimes serendipitous….Even though there is plenty of police procedure (meticulously researched, it appears), this is not an old-fashioned whodunit. And therein lies the strength of Cut Like Wound. It is not just a story of another smart cop on the trail of another serial killer. It is more a story that explores the mind of a killer, even tempts the reader to sympathise. All the time, without letting go of the fact that Gowda is the true protagonist.”

India Today

“Anita seeks to push her literary boundaries”

“In Cut Like Wound, Nair retains that same earthiness, in a dramatically different genre. By the author’s own admission, she seeks to push her literary boundaries and that is evident in this new book and its unexpected ‘hero’ — one very likely to be a recurrent character in a future series. The unglamorously named Inspector Borei Gowda literally pops out of the pages at you, and by the finish, is so lifelike that you have his entire appearance and personality mentally mapped out…..The story is an honest yet uncomfortably raw exposé of the underbelly of contemporary Indian life. The title of the book definitely plays on these deep undercuts, wounds that fester till they eat into the very core of our charmed existence.”

Khajeej Times

“All-too-human cop hero”

“Ian Rankin names four favourite novels for 2016 in the Guardian (Nov 26), includes Chain of Custody by Anita Nair: ‘concerns child slavery in Bangalore and is both brutal and sympathetic, with an all-too-human (and not entirely likable) cop hero.’”

The Guardian

“Ten best crime novels of 2016”

“List of ten best crime novels of 2016 (Nov.26) includes Chain of Custody: ‘Bangalore is India’s Silicon Valley, the rich face of Indian success in modern technology and its commercial accompaniments. Such wealth attracts crime. Inspector Borei Gowda is an admirable three-dimensional creation, quick tempered and emotional. The search for a missing 13-year-old girl develops into the more serious discovery that Bangalore has become a hub for the sex-trafficking of young girls. It is Anita Nair’s home town and it shows, in the lively portrait of a city in uncertain transition and in the passion with which she endows Gowda in his war against evil. “

Marcel Berlins

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