A scent-sensitive heroine unravels long-buried secrets in an eccentric Bengali household steeped in history and inheritance.
Blending satire, ghost story, and murder mystery, the novel explores identity, memory, and the skeletons hidden in ancestral closets.
With rich sensory detail and quirky characters, this whodunit slowly builds to a macabre climax amid the lingering aroma of old Bengal.
Hemangini Dutt Majumdar has penned a whodunit with an unusual heroine—Ollie. Short not for “olfactory” (which would have been apt), but for Olympia, from the notorious Manet painting. Ollie curates wines and experiences life through a cascade of smells—scents that serve as leitmotifs throughout the novel. She lives with her eccentric aunt Fishy and Fishy’s adopted daughter, Laura, in a house on Ballygunge Circular Road. But central to the novel is Neelbari, the sprawling ancestral home in Chandannagar, now co-owned by Fishy and the enigmatic Labanga Latika, her grandfather’s second wife, a former danseuse.
With a title like The Scratch and Sniff Chronicles, one might expect bodies to drop in the early chapters. Instead, Dutt Majumdar takes her time, sketching the quietly bohemian lives of her three leading ladies—single women with liberal views, surrounded by the scent of independence. Laura, once the daughter of a domestic at Neelbari, was adopted by Fishy. Ollie casually brings home a lover for the night, only for him to be discovered—and generously fed—by Fishy’s Tai Chi group the next morning.
The narrative is doused in heritage and inheritance. A legal tussle over Neelbari ends with Fishy’s victory, and Labanga Latika is relegated to the annexe along with her lover, the dubious purohit Shankar. To celebrate, the women head to Chandannagar where Fishy dreams of restoring the house in Monet bleu, a nod to her great-grandfather’s Parisian connection to the famous painter. But restoration takes a macabre turn when a historic banyan—Le Patriarche—is uprooted in a thunderstorm. Ollie’s sensitive nose picks up the scent of burnt wood, leading them to the toppled tree and the skeletal remains buried beneath it. The body turns out to be Kamal, Fishy’s old art teacher and former flame—Muslim, poor, and once deeply loved.
As the cold case from 1982 unfurls, we are guided through a maze of secrets, tangents, and interjections from Ollie’s dead mother, the glamorous Devaki. Killed in a bizarre piano-crushing accident in Paris alongside her husband, Devaki haunts the story with disembodied comments until she is finally given a proper entrance chapters later.
Dutt Majumdar is heavy on atmosphere, painting a rich tapestry of Bengali bhadralok life, complete with lavish meals, antique furniture, portraits, and rituals. She delights in the absurd and the intellectual—Fishy’s cat is named Habeas Corpus, and one of the detectives quotes Newton while the other is religious, sycophantic to Labanga Latika, and desperate to outshine the DSP.
The supernatural flits in through elements of tantra and possession, particularly via the ominous purohit Shankar, whose villainy is laid on thick. Meanwhile, Neelbari itself becomes a character, echoing with secrets typical of joint Bengali families—complete with literal skeletons in the closet.
With a title like The Scratch and Sniff Chronicles, one would expect Ollie to behave rather like a sniffer dog, nosing her way through clues, instead Dutt Majumdar gives her a sommelier touch, circling a wine glass under his nose. Her talent comes out when the second death takes place, followed by yet another and Laura does use her as a K9 squad briefly. The Neelbari is full of secrets many of which are typical of Bengali families with skeletons in their closets. All this soaks in the atmosphere perfectly.
The Scratch and Sniff Chronicles is part satire, part ghost story, part family saga, and entirely soaked in the aroma of eccentric Bengal. Though the story could have benefited from an earlier inciting crime, the climax delivers. The ghostly presence of Devaki may feel unnecessary, and the whimsical cover belies the adult undercurrents of the story—but together, they reflect the novel’s quirky tone. Dutt Majumdar offers readers a murder mystery where memory, smell, and slow revelations steep like Darjeeling tea.
