THE HILLS HAVE SECRETS

Stephen Alter's new crime saga is driven by mystery and menace, ritual and romance, and a strong sense of place

When I contacted Stephen Alter for a quick interview regarding his latest book, the prolific Mussoorie-based writer was at an Aerocity hotel in Delhi, having just landed from Goa—where he also lives—and off to Dibrugarh and onwards to several wildlife sanctuaries in eastern Assam. In his mid-60s, and writing for well over four decades, Alter is showing no signs of slowing down.

His first book, published in 1978, was Neglected Lives. In that novel, the young protagonist, Lionel Carmichael, had fled to the hill station of Debrakot after a forbidden love affair in Lucknow. Alter’s latest, Death in Shambles: A Hill Station Mystery, fast forwards four and a half decades, with Lionel returning to Debrakot to settle there, having just retired from the Indian Police Service. To be plainer, he was forced to resign six months before his scheduled retirement, the aftermath of breaking a prominent politician’s nose.

“Honestly, I never imagined I would write a sequel to Neglected Lives, but two or three years ago, when I started to think about trying my hand at a murder mystery, it struck me that the fictional hill station of Debrakot, which I invented 45 years ago, would be a good setting for the story,” says Alter. “Then I thought, why not bring back the main character, Lionel, as a retired police officer? Revisiting the town was interesting, though Death in Shambles is quite different from my first book and stands on its own.”