Lionel Carmichael, a retired police deputy inspector general, is looking forward to living a quiet, solitary life in the hill station of Debrakot, with an assortment of eccentric neighbours for occasional company. His plans are upended when he is asked by a former colleague, SHO Thapliyal, to help out in a double murder case. The scene of the crime is the ghostly Shambala Villa, or ‘Shambles’, as it is known to the residents of the town, named thus due to its decrepit appearance. The victims of the brutal crimes are Reuben Sabharwal, a self-styled god-man who dabbles in the mysterious and occult, and an unknown woman, dressed in a pale green sari, found hanging by a noose near Reuben’s body.
Trudging through the monsoon rains of Debrakot, Lionel embarks on his journey towards the truth, only to become more and more entangled in a web of deceit and lies. Even as a myriad powerful forces attempt to stop him, Lionel continues to push for the truth—until the sleepy little hill station finally gives up its grim secrets.
Stephen Alter is the author of more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction. Wild Himalaya: A Natural History of the Greatest Mountain Range on Earth, his most recent work of non-fiction, received the 2020 Banff Mountain Book Award in the Mountain Environment and Natural History category. His memoir, Becoming a Mountain: Himalayan Journeys in Search of the Sacred and the Sublime, received the Kekoo Naoroji Award for Himalayan Literature. In the Jungles of the Night: A Novel about Jim Corbett was shortlisted for the DSC South Asian Literature Award. His latest work of fiction is Birdwatching: A Novel.
Alter has taught at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, where he was director of the writing program for seven years. Following this, he was writer-in-residence at MIT for ten years. Among the honours he has received are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the East West Centre in Hawaii, and the Banff Centre for Mountain Culture. He is also the founding director of the Mussoorie Mountain Festival.
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