Under a Monsoon Cloud
(1986)
Blurb:
My review:
A
rare
“psychological thriller” from
Keating. The reader sees through
Ghote’s eyes the murder of Sgt. Desai by Ghote’s hero “Tiger” Kelkar,
and his
subsequent attempts to hush it up. One
can understand why Ghote would become
an accessory to murder, as his actions arise naturally from his
character
without recourse to the sensationalist sexual psychology so beloved of
Rendell. He is a more rounded person
than before: although he wishes
to be found innocent, he is fully aware of his guilt, and is ashamed at
the
untruths he and others tell, and at employing Mrs. Ahmed, devoted to
the truth,
to disprove what she believes to be the lies, but he knows to be the
truth,
told by others. As well as examining the
conflict of his professional duty to
the truth vs. his duty to his family and to himself as a policeman, the
novel
is also a warning against anger. The
root of all Ghote’s problems is a murder committed by a beast (Tiger)
in a
moment of rage, and Ghote’s siding with anger and rejecting the
calmness of his
mentor Nadkarni, forgetting that “heated anger was surely a sign of a
bad
conscience.”