A caper in Kathmandu

The city’s lanes and characters have already attracted some great fictional detectives from across the world.

Many years ago at the Jaipur Literature Festival, I sat on the lawns with a noted crime fiction writer as we discussed the many transformations the genre had undergone. Crime writing has come a long way since the days of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot; the detectives continue to work their ‘little grey cells’, but the genre is no longer just about who committed the murder. Instead, the best crime writing today goes beyond the crime itself to tell readers about societies and personal psychologies, too.