In a previous life, Abir Mukherjee was into mergers and acquisitions and in the course of his work, the Bengali-Scottish author visited Mumbai often. It was his interactions with the city’s super rich that became the starting point for his latest book, The Pinnacle (Penguin Random House), set in a luxury skyscraper in Mumbai.

“I made some good friends from that section of Indian society,” Mukherjee says over a video call from Surrey, England, where he lives. “After the lockdown, a few of them were in London, and they talked about the sorts of things that went on during the COVID-19 lockdown. So many household helpers, who were seen as quasi-family, were laid off during the pandemic.”

The Indian relationship between employer and domestic help does not have a Western equivalent, says Mukherjee. “I was also fascinated by the Nithari killings in Noida. They were also to do with the employer-servant relationship. The businessman was sentenced for essentially corrupting his servant.”

The Pinnacle is a satirical take on both Indian and Western society, and on Western views of Indian society. “I sit in the middle. I have little knowledge of a lot of things, which is always dangerous,” says Mukherjee, laughing. “If I get it right, I can be a bridge. And because I sit outside it, I can also comment on elements which Indians take for granted, like elevators, for example, where the rich travel in an express elevator, and the poor travel in a tin box without air-conditioning.

In the novel, Hollywood has-been George Abercrombie wakes up in his 68th-floor apartment one day to find his wife, Bollywood heartthrob Sweety, dead in their bedroom. As George races against time to uncover the truth, his all-purpose man Friday, Amit, is on the run from scary goons while Sweety’s assistant, Gemma, desperately tries to figure out who is blackmailing her for Sweety’s laptop and phone. The story is told in the voices of these three characters.

The reason for the three perspectives, says Mukherjee, was to give his non-Indian readers points of entry into the story. “A rich American and a middle-class American woman, they can get a handle on. The difficult one is Amit. When white people write Indian characters, they tend to put them on a pedestal. From my interactions in India, I know that’s not the case.”

George was the character he enjoyed writing the most, says Mukherjee. “He is essentially me. He’s a vain coward,” he says laughing. “Amit is a pretty bad manservant. He was just doing his best to get along. Amit’s moral compass is different but that’s because of the hand life has dealt him. The point of this book was essentially to show the similarities between these characters. They come from different levels of society, but at heart, all three are grubby little people.”

There is an echo of the Nithari killings in The Pinnacle, says Mukherjee. “A rich, cosmopolitan western man and a poor, uneducated man are accused of the same crime. Public opinion changes. At the beginning, everyone is blaming the servant for killing the flower of Indian cinema and then it becomes ‘foreigners are corrupting our innocent servants’.”

Mukherjee’s Wyndham & Banerjee crime novels are set in colonial Calcutta, where he has roots. The shift to contemporary India, he says, has allowed him to explore the relationship between the country and the forces seeking to shape it. “In death, Sweety is a heroine. She is the vision of the India that I am most comfortable with, which is open, cosmopolitan, and forward-looking.”

Sweety is also a victim of different Indias, Abir says. “She is a victim of sexual harassment, and of old men deciding what society should be. We see that not only in India but also America, Britain and across Europe where certain people have decided that they have been given the right to say who belongs and who does not. It’s always men who feel they have the right to dictate the shape and form of society.”

His next project is a new series set in Scotland. “At its heart are two middle-aged women, Suchitra (named after Mukherjee’s mother), who is Indian, and Margot, who is Scottish; they run the local store in a small, highland village and end up getting involved in international crime.”

After 10 years, he has finally found the sort of books he wants to write, says Mukherjee. “My books will always be about outsiders, and they will always have an element of humour, which is both a bomb and a scalpel.”

mini.chhibber@thehindu.co.in