British-Indian writer Abir Mukherjee has earned a strong following through his Wyndham and Banerjee mysteries set in Raj-era India, where history and crime are seamlessly woven together.
Unlike his Wyndham and Banerjee novels, The Pinnacle is written in a lighter vein, punctuated by in-jokes and improbable narrow escapes.
The Pinnacle is fast, playful and entertaining, without relying excessively on gore or violence.
From the Calcutta noir of the 1920s to the glass-and-steel world of 21st-century Mumbai is quite a leap. British-Indian author Abir Mukherjee has earned a strong following through his Wyndham and Banerjee mysteries set in Raj-era India, where history and crime are seamlessly woven together. With his new novel The Pinnacle (Penguin Random House), he leaves colonial India behind for the contemporary world of politics, technology and high-stakes intrigue.
Unlike the Wyndham and Banerjee novels, The Pinnacle is written in a lighter vein, punctuated by in-jokes and a series of improbable narrow escapes. That shift suits its world of billionaires, international intrigue and fast-moving action. Readers looking for echoes of Mukherjee's earlier work may find George Abercrombie particularly familiar. His dry cynicism makes him something of a modern counterpart to Sam Wyndham. George, however, inhabits a world driven by high-octane action rather than careful deduction, and the narrative occasionally leans a little too heavily on metaphor.
Mukherjee takes his time getting to the main event, first providing George's backstory in Mumbai. Once a Hollywood actor, he is now a down-on-his-luck star reduced to making whisky commercials for Indian audiences. That, however, is soon overtaken by a far more serious problem. George wakes up with a crashing hangover to discover his film-star wife, Sweety Suhota, dead in their bed—and, conveniently or otherwise, has no memory of what happened the previous night. It is a scenario familiar to crime fiction, but Mukherjee gives it his own comic edge.
The momentum is carried through three alternating viewpoints, each offering a different perspective on the same situation in a Rashomon-like fashion. George, the once-famous Hollywood star and increasingly desperate American husband, is trying to stay one step ahead of the police. Amit, his supposedly loyal, Jeeves-like manservant, ‘liberates’ money from George's wallet along with jewellery belonging to Sweety and then flees with goons in pursuit. Gemma, Sweety's American personal assistant, is being blackmailed over crucial digital evidence to which she has access, making her both a witness and a target.
The shifting perspectives keep the suspense high as the characters move rapidly from one crisis to another, taking the reader along on the rollercoaster ride. This is one of the book's strengths although the pace can sometimes feel too rushed. A little more breathing space might have made some of the revelations more effective and allowed the relationships between the characters to develop more fully.
Mukherjee's characters are rarely simply black or white, as one would expect from crime fiction. Most of his principal characters carry emotional baggage and conflicting motivations, although some of their actions can seem as far-fetched as the circumstances in which they find themselves. The novel also brings together many of the staple ingredients of a contemporary thriller: surveillance, social media manipulation, corporate power, geopolitical rivalry and digital evidence.
Whether describing covert operations, political manoeuvring or high-stakes confrontations, Mukherjee writes with clarity and precision. His experience as a crime novelist is evident in the construction of suspense, with twists and turns keeping the pages moving. The political commentary is deliberately overt, clearly designed to raise a knowing laugh from readers who recognise the targets. George repeatedly takes aim at his unnamed American President, whose exaggerated self-belief provides both satire and comic relief, including an amusing intervention in a murder case involving a Hollywood actor.
However, there is a noticeable difference in Mukherjee's portrayal of India and some of its characters. As readers may have noticed in The Burning Grounds, they have started to feel faintly caricatured—a contrast with the richer and more nuanced world of the earlier Wyndham novels. This may partly be because Mumbai is unfamiliar territory for a writer whose historical imagination has been so closely tied to 1920s Calcutta. The earlier setting feels lived-in. Here, some of the contemporary Indian characters seem more functional than fully realised.
The identity of the murderer also comes with too many clues, particularly in a novel with a relatively small group of obvious suspects. The mystery therefore does not quite sustain its final revelation. Yet, the sheer energy of the storytelling keeps things moving. Although it lacks the historical weight and emotional depth of the Wyndham and Banerjee series, The Pinnacle shows that Mukherjee is quite at home with the contemporary thriller. It is fast, playful and entertaining, without relying excessively on gore or violence.
