Every so often Crime and the City feels the need to escape the metropolis, head for the hills and breath some fresh air – we’ve done it before to the beautiful Scottish Highlands, the vastness of Central Asia, and the wilderness of Alaska. Now it’s time for a trek through the Himalayas… But quite how to define the region? Well, they spread across the Tibetan Plateau east towards India with parts of the range in China, India, Bhutan, Pakistan and Nepal. There are some arguments – Kashmir for instance. Of course, the best known mountain in the Himalayas is Everest but there are a hundred peaks over 23,000 feet. In World War Two it was known as “the hump” as US pilots flew heavily overloaded planes of war materiel and supplies to beleaguered China. Now tourist mountaineers queue to reach the summit of Everest… and there’s some crime fiction too….
RV Raman’s Harith Golden Age-style Harith Athrey series is all about mountain air and murder. In book three of the series, Praying Mantis (2023), detective Harith Athreya is taking a well-earned break at a boutique hill in the Himalayan foothills. But his holiday is cut short when mysterious bloody handprints appear on the walls around the resort. Someone is bumping off the hotel’s guests. If you like mountain areas the first two books in the series may be of interest to. Book one, A Will to Kill (2021), takes place at the colonial era Greybrooke Manor, high up in the misty Nilgiris of Tamil Nadu. Then Grave Intentions (2022) sees Athreya investigating suspicious thefts on a riverside dig in the heart of remote Bundelkhand, a mountainous area of northern India.
In debut novelist Ram Murali’s Death in the Air (2024) Ro Krishna is living the luxury life too at Samsara, a world-class spa for the global cosmopolitan elite nestled in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas. Ro is the American son of Indian parents, educated at the best schools, equally at home in London’s poshest clubs and on the squash court, but unmoored after he is dramatically forced to leave a high-profile job under mysterious circumstances. The other guests include a misanthropic politician; an American movie star preparing for his Bollywood crossover debut; a beautiful heiress to a family jewel fortune that barely survived Partition; and a bumbling white yogi inexplicably there to teach meditation. Then they start dying and Ro finds that maybe his next career could be detection. Kinda White Lotus in the Himalayas.
Udayan Mukerjee’s A Death in the Himalayas (2019) takes place in the Indian foothills of the Himalayas too. When well-liked Clare Watson, working to protect Himalayan leopards is murdered concerns are raised. But when news that the celebrity author-activist has been killed India’s tabloid newspapers make it front page news. India, and the Himalayas, are unsafe for women! Local detective Neville Wadia investigates and has a cast of suspects to work through – a jealous lover, a dejected husband, a sharp land grabber, a wily politician or a disgruntled local? The sleepy hill of Birtola is an idyllic locale but a killer is within. Mukerjee is a well-known Indian television journalist who lives in Seetla in snowy Uttarakhand (formerly known as Uttaranchal) in northern India close to the Himalayas and the borders with Nepal, Uttar Pradesh and Tibet.
Arne Drews takes us to Nepal’s Gorkha district in Himalayan Gold (2020). Three youths are being abducted in the hills. Inspector Sanjit investigates the distribution battles around a natural potency plant called Yarsagumba, or Himalayan Gold. A mystery but one rooted in the very real harsh living conditions of the farmers in the rural district of Gorkha and the tough lives of the village dwellers of the Himalayan foothills. The novel is published by the small independent publisher Varja Books of Kathmandu, Nepal. Arne Drews is a German doctor who visits Nepal and the Himalayas regularly and runs a healthcare charity, the Nepalmed foundation, aimed at helping villagers in places like Gorkha. There are several other Inspector Sanjit novels. Greed (2021) has also been translated into English as Inspector Sanjit investigates the illegal trade in counterfeit drugs in the Himalayan foothills. In Monsoon (2021) a hostel owner dies falling off a balcony while Inspector Sanjit investigates modern slavery, organ transplants and the effect of the rainy season on the life of the people in Nepal. In Network (2021) two animal rights activists are caught in a landslide in the Gorkha jungle Inspector Sanjit investigates the ruthless hunting of endangered animal species and in Demons (2021) an important statue is stolen from a temple in the wake of Nepal’s terrible 2015 earthquake.
Dr Sarah Hussain’s In the Foothills of the Himalayas (2020) is a somewhat different type of novel – where most Himalayas-set books are cosies and Golden Age inspired, Hussain’s book is an eco-thriller. Born in the British Raj, Vidhya grows up observing her father fight for a free India. She witnesses catastrophic flooding as a result of deforestation by order of a powerful English company and begins to understand the importance of preserving the forest. When Vidhya uncovers a conspiracy that puts her in great jeopardy, she courageously leads a group of women on a non-violent protest and they embrace the trees. But at what cost? Hussain is of South Asian heritage but is based and working as a doctor in Huddersfield in the north of England.
Let’s finish of this Crime and the City with a couple of Himalayan set true crime books….
True crime comes to the Himalayas too. In Jonathan Green’s Murder in the High Himalaya: Loyalty, Tragedy, and Escape from Tibet (2011) it is September 2006 and gunfire is heard on Cho Oyu Mountain. Climbers preparing to summit watched in horror as Chinese guards fired at a group of Tibetans en route to India. They shot Kelsang Namtso – a seventeen-year-old Tibetan nun trying to escape religious persecution – in cold blood. The climbers had caught undeniable proof on video tape. But would they reveal what they had seen and captured on film? If they did then they would likely lose the chance to climb in China again without visas. Investigative journalist Jonathan Green introduces us to the disparate band of seekers and survivors who converged at the rooftop of the world that fateful morning and the decisions they made.
And then there’s Harley Rustad’s Lost in the Valley of Death: A Story of Danger and Obsession in the Himalayas (2022). We’re in Parvati Valley, a remote and rugged corner of the Indian Himalayas. Here comes Justin Alexander Shetler, an inveterate traveller trained from adolescence in wilderness survival. In his early thirties Shetler quit his job at a tech startup and set out on a global journey. In the valley he spends weeks studying under the guidance of a sadhu, an Indian holy man, living and meditating in a cave. Accompanied by the sadhu, he sets off on a “spiritual journey” to a holy lake – a journey from which he never returned. Rustad is a freelance journalist who specialises in stories from the remaining wildernesses of the world. This is true crime in a spectacular location and likened in style to Jon Krakauer’s classic Into the Wild (1996).
The Himalayas are majestic, a mountain range without parallel in height, vastness and remoteness. Many come to climb high mountains, some to stay and find themselves in luxury resorts, other live there and endure a hardscrabble existence. A few come and murder or are murdered.
