Seven classics of hustler noir

Rahul Raina is the author of the new novel, How to Kidnap the Rich.

At CrimeReads he tagged seven "favourite books about hucksters, hustlers, con men big and small, desperate for their own piece of the action." One title on the list:

Hullaballoo in the Guava Orchard, by Kiran Desai

One of my favourite Indian novels, and one of the most unjustly ignored despite the author’s later fame. It can best be described with one of the words I hate most about Indian literature—kaleidoscopic. A freewheeling trip through small-town India, through its calumnies, secrets, hypocrisies, when the young failson Sampath Chawla accidentally becomes a holy man by decamping to the titular location. Whether you think he’s a conman or not will be based on what you think about masculinity, about the role of first-born sons in society, whether you believe in his guilt or innocence. A free-wheeling raucous satire on men and the lies they construct so readily and easily, the destruction they cause, just to make an easy buck in a world gone insane.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue