The Third Squad

by V. Sanjay Kumar

Overview

A dark, complex morality tale exploring the limits of justice in contemporary Mumbai.

“A melancholy cop’s obsessions are just the tip of the iceberg as he leads a two-fisted team determined to clean up Mumbai’s mean streets . . . Kumar’s style, blunt but often by turns poetic and droll, is arresting . . . As unusual as it is compelling, this entry lays the groundwork for an entertaining series.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Kumar evokes [Mumbai] with lyrical prose.” —Publishers Weekly

The Third Squad is an arresting, ripped-from-the-headlines noir novel that deftly explores how in recent decades, to ostensibly combat the rising tide of criminality in Mumbai’s underworld, the Indian Police Service has carried out many hundreds of extrajudicial assassinations of suspected criminals. Karan, an expert sharpshooter in an elite branch of the Indian police dispensed with dishing out this peculiar blend of vigilante justice, has a difficult choice to make: should he continue to blindly follow orders from his superiors, regardless of their moral standing, or should he take matters into his own hands and do what he believes to be right?

Belonging to a hit squad whose members all fall somewhere along the autism spectrum, Karan, who has been diagnosed with mild Asperger’s syndrome, is notorious for his ruthless precision and efficiency in carrying out these assassinations, yet he remains aloof and distant. Gradually, his impenetrable façade begins to crack, and Karan’s emotional and psychological depth reveals itself as he is forced to make decisions where the stakes are literally life-and-death. Also at play is the looming specter of the city of Mumbai itself, seemingly at the cusp of a neoliberal era of enlightenment and progress, yet still trapped under the ineluctable burden of old Bombay history, which can never quite be forgotten or suppressed.

Dark and gritty, raw and fast-paced, and never sentimental, The Third Squad distills the best aspects of classic American noir writing into a uniquely Indian context, revealing V. Sanjay Kumar as a singular talent on the crime fiction circuit.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617754975
Publisher:	Akashic Books, Ltd.
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

V. Sanjay Kumar runs an art gallery and writes about art for various magazines. His two previous novels—Artist, Undone and Virgin Gingelly—take place in the bustling cities of Mumbai and Chennai (where Kumar grew up), exploring the fringes of middle-class life there. The Third Squad is his most recent novel.

Read an Excerpt

The Third Squad

---

By V. Sanjay Kumar

Akashic Books

Copyright © 2017 V. Sanjay Kumar
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61775-497-5

---

CHAPTER 1

Somewhere Outside Pune, India Police Headquarters: Special Training Unit

"You don't have to strip a man to see his face," says the controller. "But it helps." I examine myself closely in the handheld mirror. The first rays slant through the wooden slats in the dark barracks. The sun rises between two peaks of the Sahyadri Hills, a range that shelters our training camp. In the last year we have grown to hate this valley. It has been a rigorous incarceration. Today it is all over and done with, and one way or another we will be freed. I am anxious; I feel like I have never seen myself before.

I get dressed quickly. The summons comes and the four of us soon file down a narrow corridor, shuffling and stumbling and smelling of sweat. We duck through a low door and emerge into bright sunshine and we arrange ourselves as we always do, forming a straight line with the tips of our polished boots. The roll call is poignant; one of us is missing.

He keeps us waiting as he examines each of us. I hold my breath.

"Spell discipline," he says.

I begin spelling the world and am cut off.

"Chutiya, define it!"

I glance around at the three others who are staring straight ahead. Munna, Tapas, and Kumaran. It suits them to behave like three monkeys. I start again.

"Discipline: training expected to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior."

The controller nods. He holds a polished stick in his hand that he raps on his thigh.

The fleshy sound brings back memories and I wince. He has his back turned toward us. His worn brown belt has a tear and sweat is building under his armpits. He talks to the wall.

"And how do we go about achieving this?"

I look to my colleagues and they are still motionless, backs ramrod straight and showing no signs that they are about to respond. It is up to me again.

"Discipline is instilled by a combination of repetition, physical and mental challenges, and punishment for failing to meet certain standards." I could rephrase that. I could use sister this and mother that and tell you more succinctly that we were taught to follow fucking orders, or else.

In truth, there was no real need to teach us discipline; it was something that came naturally to each of us. We hardly spoke to one other and none of us made friends. And we busied ourselves in routine. Like taking apart and assembling our firearms every day. The whole day was lived by the clock, the week was lived by the calendar, and changing seasons made no difference to us. In the worst of rains we would still be out on our run every morning. We would still go to the range and shoot our socks off.

The controller nods again, gripping the cane firmly in the palm of his other hand, and a rap follows. He pivots on the toes of his left leg. He regards each of us in turn with bulging eyes and a hint of distaste around his mouth. Somebody needs to clean his spectacles.

"Why have you been called here, gentlemen?" he barks. He speaks without pausing and his phrasing is confusing — nobody has ever called us gentlemen before.

None of us wants to say why we are here. We all know it but are loath to speak. I sense his irritation and I crack first; I always do.

"To learn from those who have passed on?"

He clucks his tongue. "Why do you talk like this, Karan? Vague, roundabout, and always with a question. Say it as it is. One of you has died, has fallen, has failed. It is a failure."

I breathe deeply. One of us had taken a bullet between the eyes. The rest of us were asked to inform the family.

"He did not die in vain," I say. I sound like a school-boy.

After a moment of silence the controller shrugs. "We need to learn. If you men learn from this incident, then what you say is true." And then he speaks in French: "Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres."

I alone understand what he is saying. He looks toward me expectantly.

"Karan, you seem upset. If you know the meaning of this expression, why don't you translate it for the others?"

I rephrase it to make him seem less heartless than he is: "It is strange how it is good that from time to time someone dies so others don't have to."

Ranvir Pratap looks at me. He is surprised and there is a hint of respect as he nods slightly in my direction. They do not expect us to think, and they get worried when our gray cells start working, because thinking is their job and doing is ours.

"You may be feeling raw right now but I will not lecture you. Get used to death. I have operated in its realm long enough to respect it. It is extreme, and its finality is hard to stomach. You guys are not meant to respond like the rest of humanity. That's not your nature. Right, Karan?"

He wheels around and glares at me because I am a known weak link, someone who occasionally gets muddled and hesitates. I am in the squad only because I topped every shooting test, busting their all-time records. They could not dump me on paper. But I was on the case that claimed my friend and colleague. I was the backup and the sod who was slow to pull the trigger, who gave benefit of doubt to his target, and my colleague paid for it with his life. I did make amends. I finished the target, made him pay. A rage I never knew I had ruled me for a few minutes. The controller had arrived at the scene and was speechless at my handiwork. I guessed then that I had lost my chances of qualifying and they would post me back to a desk job in that morass of clerkdom from which we were pulled out. Rage is not good in this business because it's unpredictable.

Summing-up time, and Ranvir Pratap is brief. I expect the worst.

"We experienced a live situation and, despite your training, you came up short. None of us know how we will respond in a moment of extreme stress, when a split second decides life and death. We try to train you for it but that is only half the job. The other half comes from who you are, your genetic code. As trainers, our job is to choose correctly." He looks at each of us and settles his gaze on me. "Karan, you have barely survived this program. But I have decided to back you — I was the deciding vote. You will be under my direct command, so if anybody has to hold the can it will be me."

Later he pulls me to the side. "What I said there was for the others. Do you know why we chose you despite your mistake?"

"Sir?"

"All trainers look for just one thing and you have it. You have something that cannot be taught."

We entered Mumbai by road; there was no welcome committee. The four of us were in an unmarked jeep and as instructed we were in plainclothes. We hardly spoke during the winding journey through the hills. I felt a tingling sensation as we approached Special Branch which I chalked up to pins and needles. Ranvir Pratap's words still rang in my head. You will lead a simple life, he said. There will be no statistics in the Third Squad, not if I can help it. There will be no presentations, no bar charts, and no medals. You will clean your guns, mark your ammunition, and do God's work.

Arriving at Special Branch I caught myself smiling as we stepped out of the jeep. Kumaran had a pronounced limp, Munna the "lookout" was bumping into objects animate and inanimate, and Tapas was memorizing all the signs including one that said, No paan chewing, no spitting, and no loitering.

The four of us walked up to a drab building with a low entrance on the side. At the door we turned, stood with our backs to it, and clicked our heels.

"Stand down!" barked Munna, imitating Ranvir Pratap.

"Gentlemen," said Tapas, sotto voce.

We flipped open our minicameras, raised our hands in unison, and took selfies.
(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from The Third Squad by V. Sanjay Kumar. Copyright © 2017 V. Sanjay Kumar. Excerpted by permission of Akashic Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Editorial Reviews

01/30/2017
Karan, the hero of this murky noir from Kumar (Artist, Undone), is an “encounter specialist” with the Third Squad, a special branch of the Mumbai police. The branch furthers the cause of justice by carrying out hits on the most egregious criminals. Karan, a new recruit with infallible aim, has Asperger’s, which makes him particularly suited to the black-and-white world of his job—until that same binary sense of right and wrong leads him to directly disobey a kill order, because it matters to him whom he shoots. Written in the first and third person (with one foray into second person), the overly dense narrative and its many threads provide occasionally confusing insights into Karan. One of the more interesting characters is Mumbai, which Kumar evokes with lyrical prose (“In the night the city yields to the will of those who hold remorse for ransom. This city of noir sleeps at dawn. The night’s debris waits for the tide”). (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"The Third Squad enveloped me in Mumbai, in its strangeness even to people who call it home. Each of the many odd but totally real characters who populate this book shines a light on the city and on one another. It’s a page-turner, but as I got closer to the end I slowed down because I didn’t want to have to leave this world."

S.J. Rozan

"The Third Squad ends with an emotional wallop, making it stand out among crime novels. It has the chiaroscuro effects of classic noir, but also the philosophical depth of highbrow literary fiction . . . Mumbai teems with lurid intrigue in this smart and affecting work of postmodern noir."

Starred Review Shelf Awareness

"Against a backdrop of debilitating poverty, ancient religion, staggering wealth, and corruption, Mumbai comes alive in The Third Squad as the perfect storm for twenty-first-century noir. Driving this absolutely compelling tale is Karan, a police sharpshooter who is essentially a trained assassin. Initially distanced from his own actions by both Asperger’s syndrome and Old World devotion to authority, he’s ultimately forced to reconcile personal morality with obedience in a grim new age of blind opportunism."

Tim McLoughlin

"[A] gripping thriller . . . Kumar has created some thoroughly intriguing characters . . . but the most fascinating of Kumar’s characters is Mumbai itself—enormous, crowded, hyperactive, roiling, stunningly rich and grindingly poor, and teeming with almost unfathomable energy. International-crime fans should flock to this one."

Booklist

"The Third Squad enveloped me in Mumbai, in its strangeness even to people who call it home. Each of the many odd but totally real characters who populate this book shines a light on the city and on one another. It's a page-turner, but as I got closer to the end I slowed down because I didn't want to have to leave this world."
—S.J. Rozan, author (as Sam Cabot) of Skin of the Wolf

"Against a backdrop of debilitating poverty, ancient religion, staggering wealth, and corruption, Mumbai comes alive in The Third Squad as the perfect storm for twenty-first-century noir. Driving this absolutely compelling tale is Karan, a police sharpshooter who is essentially a trained assassin. Initially distanced from his own actions by both Asperger's syndrome and Old World devotion to authority, he's ultimately forced to reconcile personal morality with obedience in a grim new age of blind opportunism."
—Tim McLoughlin, author of Heart of the Old Country"

From the Publisher

2016-12-18
A melancholy cop's obsessions are just the tip of the iceberg as he leads a two-fisted team determined to clean up Mumbai's mean streets.The four men who make up the title team originally meet at police headquarters outside Pune, India. Sharpshooting Karan, who narrates much of the novel in grim, hard-boiled prose, leads the squad, which also includes Munna, Tapas, and Kumaran. Any notion Karan might have of serving the greater good is obliterated after a few months as the quartet is turned into contract killers for the police. Several chapters resemble short stories devoted to the assassination of individual crime figures. As the squad settles into its nasty business, Karan's loyal wife, Nandini, seeing a coarsening in her husband, worries about this new assignment. Pregnancy makes her more guarded but no less worried. Karan's boss, Ranvir Pratap, the compulsive larger-than-life character who put the squad together, is under constant administrative fire that prompts him to construct a hilarious set of "Criteria" for the hiring of squad members. Karan's demeanor and his resulting reputation may stem from the fact that he has Asperger's syndrome, a condition that entitles him (and us) to be treated to a pedantic explanation of the syndrome as well as an amusing 48-question survey. Can this crack team keep from cracking up as they rack up the kills? Kumar's (Virgin Gingelly, 2013, etc.) style, blunt but often by turns poetic and droll, is arresting even as his idiosyncratic plot roams far and wide, switching perspectives and pursuing twisty subplots with vigor. As unusual as it is compelling, this entry lays the groundwork for an entertaining series.

Kirkus Reviews