KOCHI: To anyone who is new to Zac O' Yeah and the world of Hari Majestic, at first glance, Tropical Detective: A Hari Majestic Mystery just seems like an obnoxious crossover between a sleazy Kannada film and an American campus comedy. The humour may hit you before you are ready to laugh or acquaint yourself with the unending varieties of characters. But there is something about Hari, an everyman who becomes an unlikely hero and is unwilling to question his own abilities, that makes you want to go right back to it.
"Swalpa untoward mishap agithey ('some untoward mishap is happening'," reports Hari in Kannada to the police after he was beaten up and the ATM he guards is robbed. The story seems to pick up where it has left the protagonist. Married to Diamond, his comically innocent wife who relishes posters of Malayalam actors with big moustaches and delivers lines like, "Children, wake up and smell the chicory!". Their children, Ondu and Eradu are a pair of twins that look curiously unlike each other. A lot is said about his detective agency which seems to be less than flourishing at the beginning.
After the robbery, it is clear that Hari is a familiar face in the police station among Ramboswamy and the moustachioed Sub-Inspector Pushpa. Soon, he finds himself entwined in a much bigger case. There is something to be said about our hero's relentless courage when it comes to pursuing the case. When he learns an astrologer's interpretation that he must set off on 'Operation Idol' a pilgrimage to find a divine idol, Hari is perturbed for the first time. As he secures a fake passport through a half Italian man and a Kashmiri ex-spy., his dilemma is about whether he will come back successfully.
Zac O'Yeah writes effortlessly. His words flow from page to page like the loud and endless banter between friends. They flow so easily that some of his characters remain half imagined cartoon characters without much to offer other than a partial chuckle. That being said, his ability to weave humour into everything has the same relentlessness that his character has when solving cases. The most fully fleshed out character in the book is the city of Bengaluru itself, everything from run-ins at KG Road to BMTC buses, the smells of the city waft off of the pages. Tropical Detective comes from this special place of love and unabated laughter.
Rating: Thumbs up
Box
Title: Tropical Detective - A Hari Majestic Mystery
Author: Zac O'Yeah
Pages: 375
Price: 350
Publisher: Pan Macmillan India