India, Feb. 6 -- In the quiet setting of Tamil Nadu's backwaters, a Malayalam-speaking IPS officer gets posted. With his newly wedded wife in tow, his story reveals like a deceptively tepid premise made in the 1960s. The book The Jasmine Murders wastes no time, as it opens with a chilling line: "That's a head he's carrying." Right from here, the novel sheds any veil of restraint, signalling that beneath the stillness of this little hamlet lies a history soaked in blood, silence and complicity.

Our protagonists Jayan and Uma navigate cultural dissonance, language barriers and the unsettling undercurrents of an unfamiliar town in a gripping noir that spirals into a fast-paced trail of burglaries and murders. The pleasure of reading the nov...