Author’s Note

I have always been an avid reader of mysteries. To me, it is something akin to magic when an author lays down a trail of clues and artfully hides them under a cloak of red herrings; only to whip it off at the end, with a swish and a ‘Ta-da!’; to universal gasps from readers. But in all the mysteries I read, I always thought that I might have done something a little different if I were the author.

I first applied those ideas when I tried my hand at the mystery genre with A Killer Among Us, published by Readomania in 2020. It was well-received by readers, and shortlisted for the AutHer Awards in the ‘popular choice category’ the following year.

Mohini Choudhury, the protagonist of The Mo Mysteries, was born in one short story in my collection, Down a Dark Alley (Readomania, 2021) as a college student who had just introduced the love of her life, amit, to her grandfather; the once tyrannical and ailing head of her family. This has unpleasant repercussions, to put it mildly, but I shall say no more—except that it is not what you think.

Mohini, or Mo to her friends and family, who love her despite her odd ways, then bloomed into the central character in this collection which you now hold in your hands.

She is an amateur sleuth, who is seen in a succession of entry-level jobs in different industries (real-estate, finance, data-entry) she doesn’t at all care for. This is evidenced by the fact that at the first whiff of a mystery, Mo abandons her paid job to go after her quarry, much to the chagrin of her family and needless to say, employers.

Physically, I made her as unremarkable as possible. no luxuriant moustaches or distinctive profiles for our Mo. Mo is a wallflower. Quiet, unassuming—unemotional to a fault.

But this lack of distinctiveness is Mo’s strength in her sleuthing. People underestimate her, let their guards down, and about 10,000 words later, the game is up for them.

She is a young, single woman from a family fallen on relatively hard times. Most of her clientele are friends and family who come to her because she is a problem-solver of growing repute. The mysteries occur at different points in her life. The erstwhile love of her life, amit, is married to her best friend by the time of ‘Push Comes to Shove’. ‘The Cursed Stone’ is a mystery she stumbles into when she pays a reluctant visit to an aunt in Kalimpong when still nursing a broken heart, she solves two mysteries undeterred by the pandemic a few years later, and another case finds her when she is meant to be undergoing training in hyderabad for a new job well into her informal career as sleuth.

Perhaps in the future, she can dispense with boring desk jobs and start a detective agency of her own. But that is for another book.

Till then, I hope you enjoy Mo’s adventures in this one!

Ushasi Sen Basu