James Ziskin--Bombay Monsoon

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm a huge fan of James Ziskin's award-winning Ellie Stone novels, featuring 1960s New York reporter Ellie Stone, but his upcoming BOMBAY MONSOON, out December 6th, is something completely different. I absolutely cannot wait to read this book, and I asked Jim to tell us what inspired such a departure.

JAMES W. ZISKIN: Bombay Monsoon is a new direction for me. I’ve had a lot of fun writing the seven Ellie Stone books, and I intend to write more, but I was overdue to try something else. The idea of a thriller set in India had been simmering in my mind for a long time. I’ve made fifty-six separate trips to India over the past twenty-five years and, all told, have spent nearly four years there. I even got married in India. It’s a second home to me.

The Ellie Stone books feature a twenty-something female first-person narrator. If you look at my photo above, you may understand why I wanted to try a male narrator for a change. Write something involving my own experience. And so India naturally came to mind. After all, I was an expat living a wonderfully rich life in Bangalore, Mumbai (Bombay), and Pune (Poona). Surely there was a story I could tell about that.

 SYNOPSIS

 Bombay Monsoon

The year is 1975. Danny Jacobs is an ambitious, young American journalist who’s just arrived in Bombay for a new assignment. He’s soon caught up in the chaos of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s domestic “Emergency.”

Willy Smets is Danny’s enigmatic expat neighbor. He’s a charming man, but with suspicious connections. As a monsoon drenches Bombay, Danny falls hard for Sushmita, Smets’s beguiling and clever lover—and the infatuation is mutual.

“The Emergency,” a virtual coup by the prime minister, is only the first twist in the high-stakes drama of Danny’s new life in India. The assassination of a police officer by a Marxist extremist, as well as Danny’s obsession with the inscrutable Sushmita, conspire to put his career—and life—in jeopardy. And, of course, the temptations of Willy Smets’s seductive personality sit squarely at the heart of the matter.

THE EMERGENCY

I love historical fiction. I love reading it and writing it. And while many people might not think a book set in 1975 qualifies as historical, I say it is. And I’ll fight you. If readers can ding you for anachronisms and historical errors, it’s a historical novel.

Article 352 of the Indian Constitution provides for broad powers in the event of a domestic emergency. On June 25, 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi invoked Article 352 and did precisely that. After the courts had ruled her 1971 election to parliament invalid (you can’t be PM if you’re not an MP), she declared an emergency and immediately started throwing her political opponents in jail, canceling elections, censoring the press, and suspending due process and civil liberties. Twenty-one months of rule by decree followed. The world’s largest democracy was anything but.

 What better time to set a thriller than during an existential threat to democracy? That’s what I asked myself when considering the book I wanted to write. I was fascinated by this period in history. The world was still engaged in its Cold War chess match. India was a non-aligned nation and, as such, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union courted Mrs. Gandhi. She was a powerful figure in the geopolitical landscape of 1975. So when she declared the Emergency, the world took notice. Here’s a scene from Bombay Monsoon where Danny meets an American businessman in a hotel.

 

“Mrs. Gandhi has taken over,” he said in a low voice. “Might as well be a coup. Mark my words, no court is going to throw her out of office. That conviction of hers will disappear faster than shit goes through a goose. World’s largest democracy, my ass. This country’s no better than a tinpot dictatorship.”

I considered his words. He might well have been right. One thing was for sure, though. He was an asshole. The ugly American. I wished I hadn’t sat down, but I wanted information, and he seemed to have some.

 

 WILLY SMETS

I’m a great admirer of Graham Greene’s and his “entertainments” involving strangers in foreign lands. I think my character Willy Smets would be right at home in a Greene story. He’s the charming, avuncular neighbor who takes Danny under his wing. But is he who he seems to be?

 

The first time I met Willy Smets, he told me I could think of Indians either as the obstacles to my happiness or the means to achieve it. Having materialized from the smoke and chatter behind me, he spoke directly into my ear and scared the hell out of me. I reeled around to see who belonged to the voice with an accent I couldn’t quite place. A European man of about forty-five or fifty.

“My name is Willy Smets,” he said. His thin lips stretched into a smile, baring a line of long teeth. “This is my place. And you, young man, have only recently arrived in Bombay.”

I blushed. “Is it so obvious?”

 

 

I also wanted to write something that echoed Greene’s themes and settings. India was the perfect locale for such a story, and the 1970s couldn’t have been more suitable. The novel I had in mind reminded me a bit of Gatsby, so the elevator pitch became: “Graham Greene meets Gatsby on the Subcontinent.” Catchy, no?

DANNY

Danny Jacobs is a young journalist looking to make a name for himself. He’s reported from Chile, from Africa, and from Vietnam. Now he arrives in Bombay just as Mrs. Gandhi clamps down on freedom of the press. What’s a reporter to do? Maybe embark on a dangerous, ill-advised romance with his expat neighbor’s lover? Sure. Why not? What could go wrong?

 

Her name was Sushmita. Easily half Smets’s age, she was a couple of years younger than I was, too. An extremely attractive girl, she was sexy, but hardly perfect. There was that one slightly crooked incisor, for example, and a small scar at the side of her right eye, caused perhaps by a childhood fall. And those matrimonial classifieds in Indian newspapers might have described her complexion as dusky. Shameful, I thought.

 

Look, I told myself, I had no intention of betraying my friend with his girl. But then, how well did I know him? And even if I allowed myself wild fantasies of what might happen with Sushmita, I certainly didn’t have the guts to act on my baser instincts. It was a game. Get as close as I dared to crossing the very desirable point of no return, then step back with honor intact. The only problem was determining where the point of no return began and where honor ended.

 

 SUSHMITA

The object of Danny’s obsession is the inscrutable Sushmita, who lives with Willy Smets in the penthouse apartment. Quite unexpectedly, she emerged as the driving force in my story. (That happens more often than you’d think. Characters take on a larger role that we had originally planned for them. It usually works out for the best.) Danny is never sure of where he stands with this Cambridge-educated woman who seems to return his affections. Until she doesn’t. She’s damaged, somehow, but Danny can’t possibly know why. Sushmita is perhaps the most complex character I’ve ever dreamt up.

  

PREJUDICE AND COLORISM

Through Danny’s eyes, I explored two important social themes in Indian society: the treatment of the plight of the servant class and the ever-present scourge of colorism, prejudice based on skin color. Upon his arrival in Bombay, Danny suffers major culture shock, particularly when confronted with the treatment of domestic help. He’s horrified by the indifferent and callous attitudes inherent in the rigid class system. Then there’s the obsession over fair skin. Sushmita clearly has experienced deep trauma over the darkness of her own complexion. Through her tears, she tells Danny how a matron at school had tormented her over the color of her skin.

 

“For seven years she made me feel ugly. Called me a black jungli. She stole my soap and replaced it with a jar of Afghan Snow. Then she invited the other girls to laugh at me.”

“Afghan Snow?”

She glowered. “Skin cream. It makes your skin lighter. Until you wash it off. Then you’re just as ugly as before.”

 

HORN OK PLEASE

 Anyone who’s ever traveled by road in India has seen the exhaust-belching trucks with their brightly painted signs proclaiming “HORN OK PLEASE.” This means it’s okay to sound your horn as a warning that you’re going to overtake (pass). In Bombay Monsoon, I went to great pains to describe the terror of driving in India, especially outside the city. Especially on dangerous mountain roads. I experienced this terror first hand when scaling the Western Ghats of Maharashtra more than twenty-five years ago. The Ghats are the mountains that rise from the coastal plain to the Deccan plateau. Today you climb the Ghats via a safe, modern highway, but my first trip up and down was on a two-lane, pockmarked road that hugged the side of the mountain. There were few, if any, guardrails. And if you think the drivers slowed down and took extra care due to the cliffs and the certain death awaiting a missed turn, think again. It was a rollercoaster ride without seatbelts or safety bars. It was and has remained the most terrifying ride of my life. And I wrote it into Bombay Monsoon. Happy reading!

 

THE FRAIL FOOTHOLD OF DEMOCRACY

 As I researched and began to write Bombay Monsoon, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between Mrs. Gandhi’s attempts to retain power and the failed insurrection of January 6, 2021 in our own country. In both cases, democracy was under siege. In June 1975, Mrs. Gandhi prevailed. In January 2021, our democracy did. As Danny reflects on the Emergency in Bombay Monsoon, he observes—somewhat sardonically—that only one year before, in 1974, Richard Nixon had resigned the presidency and set a higher ethical standard than did the Indian prime minister. Nixon did not attempt a coup to retain power. Whether he saw the writing on the wall or was forced to go, he did. No attacks on the Capitol. And, believe it or not, I am grateful to Richard Nixon for that.

Bombay Monsoon (Oceanview Publishing) will be available in hardcover, e-book, and audiobook versions on December 6, 2022.

 

BIO

James W. Ziskin (Jim) is the author of the Anthony, Barry, and Macavity Award-winning Ellie Stone Mysteries. His books have been finalists multiple times for the Edgar, Anthony, Barry, Lefty, and Macavity awards. His short story, “The Twenty-Five-Year Engagement,” was a finalist for the 2021 Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards for Best Short Story. His latest novel, Turn to Stone, won the Barry Award for Best Paperback Original, and the Macavity for Best Historical Mystery. Turn to Stone was also a finalist for the 2021 Sue Grafton Memorial Award and the Lefty Award for Best Historical Mystery. His next novel, Bombay Monsoon (Oceanview Publishing), is coming in December 2022.

His international experience includes two years working and studying in France, extensive time in Italy, and nearly four years in India. He speaks Italian and French.

James lives near Boston. He is represented by Kimberley Cameron of Kimberley Cameron and Associates,  https://www.kimberleycameron.com/

DEBS: Jim, your story about climbing the Western Ghats reminded me so much of trips on the old Pan American Highway to Mexico City when I was a child. That road was absolutely terrifying and I suspect those no-guardrail drop offs inspired my adult fear of heights.

Readers, have you visited India, and if not, is it on your bucket list?

Jim, I also want to know what Indian languages you speak! 

REDS ALERT: Pamela Priest is the winner of Maya Corrigan's BAKED OFF! Pamela, email me your address at deb at deborahcrombie dot com and I will forward it to Maya!