One of my favourite thrillers: Alistair MacLean's Puppet on a Chain

 

Alistair MacLean (1922-1987) is the acclaimed author of 29 bestselling novels, many of  which were adapted for film. The most famous ones are The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare. One of my favourites is Puppet on a Chain. It centres around Interpol British cop Paul Sherman, who flies down to Amsterdam to uncover a drug ring. It’s deeply atmospheric, with the canals, high houses, psychopaths and corrupt cops. I love the concept of smuggling drugs in puppets and the way the villains make a puppet representing their next victim: a grisly warning, which they carry through almost each time. I have used a similar ruse in my Killer Kavita series, which revolves around a female contract killer. Her USP is that she sends her targets a poetic warning before each kill, informing them of the day of their deaths…and she still gets her man or woman, as the case may be. In Puppet on a Chain, Sherman is fallible and he makes mistakes, for which readers have criticized the author. Yeah, we want the hero to be on top of things; mine certainly are. But there’s a certain vulnerability to the character and I loved the story from the moment I got hold of the book as a teenager. The 1970 film did not do it justice but the book is unputdownable.

Which is your favourite Alistair MacLean novel?

The 1971 film Puppet on a Chain and the full audiobook are available on You Tube.

Spiti Valley in The Valley of Lies: The importance of settings in a novel

 

My new novel, The Valley of Lies, is a contemporary fiction thriller set in Spiti Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India.

Spiti is a high- altitude valley in North Eastern Himachal Pradesh. The name means ‘the middle land’ and it’s wedged between Tibet and India, in the Kunzum mountain range of the Himalayas. The River Spiti meanders through the valley and its biggest town Kaza. Spiti has a cold desert environment similar to Ladakh and it comes under the Lahaul-Spiti district. There’s a wealth of information available online regarding Spiti, including excellent blog posts and video blogs or Vlogs, so I won’t go into those details. Instead, I’ll share why I chose this setting for The Valley of Lies. Before going further, I’ll reproduce the blurb on the rear jacket of the novel, to give you an idea of the plot in a succinct way.

A remote valley. A deadly blizzard. Secrets that threaten to spill.
When celebrated cop Aarav Singh Rana arrives in Spiti Valley to help his childhood friend, Tashi, he expects a straightforward case of blackmail. Instead, he walks into a maze of buried truths: a network of criminals operating in the shadows, stolen stones, vanishing bodies, and a murder that makes no sense.
As a brutal blizzard cuts the valley off from the outside world, suspicion turns inward. Every conversation hides a lie. Every memory shifts under scrutiny with no way out, and the accused must navigate loyalty, doubt, and the burden of truth.
In a valley where nothing goes unnoticed, and the snow buries the truth deeper, Aarav must uncover it before the past claims another victim.
Will he make it out before it’s too late?

I’m sure this gives you a general idea about the novel. In crime fiction, the setting is crucial to the action, almost a character in itself. I wanted a cold, mysterious atmosphere for the novel with an emphasis on events being out of human control. That’s one of the biggest challenge for the hero, CBI Inspector Aarav Singh Rana: how to navigate the situation and narrow the list of suspects when the weather threatens to cut off everybody from the outside world. Yes, it’s been done before. Agatha Christie was a master at getting the sense of space right. This is, of course, true of the film world. See how the setting plays a big role in a movie like The Edge (1997), in which Anthony Hopkins’ character is caught up in the cold Alaskan wilderness with Alec Baldwin’s character. The tension is enhanced because Baldwin is having an affair with Hopkins’ much younger wife (played by Elle Macpherson) and there’s a scary bear hunting them down. This is just one example of how the setting influences the narrative. We see this is many good movies.

A novel that does this beautifully is Danish author Peter Hoeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow. A beautiful, melancholic story about the investigation into the suspicious death of a young boy. The snowy setting is central to the plot and forms a major part of the narrative.

I've tried something similar in The Valley of Lies. Get your copy today.

So, Spiti valley is the place where the action plays out in The Valley of Lies.

Here's an image of Kalpa, en route to Spiti.

And here's Reckong Peo, which features in both The Valley of Lies and the first Killer Kavita novel, called Killer Kavita-The Girl with the Poison Touch.