Crime Narrative as a Vehicle of Socio-political Critique: A Study of Vikas Swarup's Six Suspects

Crime fiction is not inherently a conservative genre but fluid in nature as evident from the constant revision it has gone through rereading and rewriting. Still, the popularity of the genre remains unhindered, like any other popular work of art, for this combination of familiarity and uniqueness. Umberto Eco agrees to this formula in The Role of the Reader saying that popular literature: “1… must achieve a dialectic between order and novelty––in other words between scheme and innovation; 2. This dialectic must be perceived by the consumer, who must not only grasp the contents of the message, but also the way in which the message transmits these contents” (173-4). Vikas Swarup’s Six Suspects is a murder mystery set in a capitalist society and while it does follow the narrative structure of traditional detective fiction, at the same time, however, it has overthrown not only the many conventions of the genre but also offers up a unique critique of the capitalistic society portrayed in the work. This paper would like to study how by tampering with the narrative structure Swarup has broadened the genre to a recognizable sub-category which relate to the social, political and historical formations of postliberal India.