Killer on the prowl

It’s good to know that books are still reasonably priced, especially when it comes to a quick flip read like The Madras Mangler. This is the kind of book that you can pick up without wincing as you’re about to catch a train or a plane, arrested by the title. The Madras Mangler, as one might guess from the title, is a book about a serial killer. Usha Narayanan takes the popular elements like a campus filled with vulnerable girls, leering villains and a hero with a straight nose.

She takes Kat as her ‘heroine’, a tomboy girl surrounded by her pretty friends, including Minx, or Meenakshi and Lolita or Lalitha. Kat storms in to rescue her friends from the eve-teasing Asuras led by Jambu and finds herself way out of her depth.

Then the hero with the straight nose, appropriately named Vir, appears out of the darkness and scatters the Asuras with a few swift kicks to the jaws. Vir is not what he seems and the tension between him and Kat is palpable. And so the tale unwinds, with the discovery of a dozen odd corpses, all girls.

As is accepted in serial killer stories, Narayanan gives us glimpses of a tortured mind capturing girls and gagging and trussing them to their beds, with silver anklets on their feet. The killer is very certainly a relative of Norman Bates, since all his manglings are dedicated to his mother.

Narayanan’s scattered set of characters effectively divert attention from the serial killer’s identity — all there is in terms of a giveaway are two hints from the author.

One could have asked questions like, if so many girls went missing, how is it that no one was looking for them? Why wasn’t there more suspense? In creating the diversions Narayanan unfortunately diluted the suspense.

One could have also asked for more depth in the characters — barring Lolita, others including Kat play the expected roles. Nor is the serial killer given much to do beyond mangle and his relationship with his mother is revealed abruptly. In the book girls are rebellious, top cops are corrupt and patriarchal and men from the backwaters violent.

The Madras Mangler is very relevant in a climate where women are being gangraped and then murdered — though that thought would occur to most readers much later.

Narayanan’s intent is good — to make the reader’s flesh creep by using a relatable background, to point out that the traditional world of Chennai has changed and that India is unsafe for women. Leadstart has marketed it effectively with a book trailer on YouTube. All put together, the book is a sensational kind of combination worthy of the annals of pulp fiction.

Anjana Basu the author of 'Rhythms Of Darkness'