M.J. Carter is the author of The Strangler Vine, a wonderfully
enjoyable historical thriller, set in the 1830s, in India. The novel introduces Blake and Avery, an
investigative pair with hints of Sherlock and Watson – solid, dependable Avery
is the sidekick to brilliant, but troubled, Blake. They are both employees of The East India
Company. When their employers ask them to track down a missing poet, Xavier
Mountstuart, they are forced to confront the Thugs, who roam around strangling
their victims…or do they? Perhaps Company man, Major William Sleeman, is
exaggerating their depravity? Perhaps Thugs
are little more than vagabonds, and pawns in The Company’s power games? It’s a
great book, and I urge you to read it.
In the meantime, M.J. Carter answers a few questions.
In the endnotes, you call
yourself a neophyte when it comes to India and its history, but you also
mention your mother-in-law lived for many years in Madras / Chennai. How important, if at all, was this family
connection? How come you decided to
write about colonial India?
It was very important. My mother-in-law was the reason I heard about
the Thugs and William Sleeman in the first place. I’d never have thought about
writing about India if it hadn’t been for her. She was rather an amazing woman
and was a nun in Chennai running the teacher training college there in the
1950s before she decided to renounce her vows. In fact my husband wrote a
memoir about her, Family Romance, by John
Lanchester. Her stories about the Thugs were the starting point, but what
really got me interested was the fact that there was a fierce debate about
whether the Thugs had existed or whether they were a convenient British
fabrication, or myth. That gave me my story.
