Behind the smokescreen

A crime fiction novelist, Vish Dhamija strings together edge-of the-seat courtroom and police drama stories. His seven novels have been page turners and his eighth one, The Heist Artist, published by HarperCollins is no different. Vagh Pratap Singh aka Captain is a conman. He was a small town guy who strayed and has no regrets about it. When we meet Captain, he is almost 40, thinking of retirement, wandering in Benaras and then in Pushkar, before he gets a call that will get him the biggest case, a big sum. Captain has been assigned the task to find out who owns Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh’s Poppy Flowers and steal it for the person who has given him the call. Like every crime potboiler, there is intrigue, double-crossing, bloodshed and some unlikeliest of brotherhood in The Heist Artist. 

We chat with Dhamija about the novel, which has been written in two different voices. One is the Captain’s voice and another is that of the third person’s. Explaining the literary device, the London-based author says, “The reason is simple: the first person is the Captain talking to the readers, and the rest of the narrative is in third person (classical storytelling) where the story is from the perspective of the lead character in that particular chapter. It’s not the author or the reader’s voice. The idea was to separate the two so that there is no ambiguity about from whose perspective a particular scene has been written.” 

When one reads a crime fiction, one comes across a particular set of characters — a hero, villain and a partner in crime. The character of Inspector Hari Mohan Gupta in The Heist Artist is difficult to categorise. “Gupta is, of course, an aberration; he’s someone who’s like the conscience that never leaves you alone. He is shown as someone who is single-minded and determined, and so when he gets after the Captain, he does everything he can to book the criminal. He’s shown as someone who relentlessly — without caring about authorities or the politics — pursues the criminal. We need more people like him in the world,” adds the author. 

One would imagine the writing in the crime fiction is triggered from real life criminal incidents that are registered with the police and make it to the courts. So is Dhamija inspired by a never-ending fodder for writing in the crime genre?

“No,” replies the author and continues, “I do get inspired by events, but not from existing cases in the files. Those are for people who write non-fiction. Plots for crime fiction are largely imaginary, but most of us (crime authors) try to keep them realistic so that readers can believe in the story.”

On the same note, how do you pick stories that would make an engaging mystery or crime thriller? “I don’t pick stories; I plot them from scratch. All fiction (including crime) is imaginary — it could have happened, it can happen — storytelling is about making the reader imagine that it’s plausible. It’s entertainment. It’s about the narrative. And I play with the narrative a lot, like you mentioned earlier, The Heist Artist being in the first and third person. In other books, I’ve broken the chronology to make the reader jump between the past and the present. With experience, one learns to make it interesting and engaging for the reader. That is the art of storytelling, isn’t it?,” queries Dhamija. 

Since he plots his characters from scratch, does the author ever find himself rooting for the antagonist? The writer, who has penned The Mogul and Unlawful Justice, replies in ‘yes’ and ‘no’. He says, “It’s never about what I think — it’s what the story demands. All stories need to be told from a perspective and that could be from the perspective of the protagonist, the anti-hero or the antagonist. If you can make the reader emotionally invest in the character, anything is possible. So, from an author’s perspective, it not about rooting for one side or another; sometimes you are the statue, sometimes you are the pigeon. There are no rights or wrongs.”