Chicanery

Chicanery
by Timeri N. Murari
Publisher: Niyogi Books (2024)

Timeri N. Murari’s Chicanery unfolds as a political thriller set in a fictional republic that could easily be mistaken for several real-world states where democracy has curdled into authoritarianism. At the center is David Richelieu—Cyomared—a former prime minister returning after two decades in exile. He knows execution awaits him, yet he returns, ostensibly for love. The regime, steeped in paranoia, suspects other motives—perhaps ties to the resistance movement called the Others. Upon arrival, Cyomared is arrested and subjected to prolonged interrogation by the Minister of Culture. Murari eschews conventional naming for state actors: they are known only by their
titles—the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Home, The Host, The Assistant. This device builds a bureaucratic distance, reinforcing the state’s depersonalized grip on its people and politics. It’s a clever structural element, but also one that contributes to the emotional flatness that runs through much of the novel.

The core of the book lies in its atmosphere—one of hyper-surveillance and deceptions. The ruling populist party, unnamed but unmistakably familiar, has gutted the republic’s democratic core, replacing it with AI surveillance, CCTVs, censorship, and tightly controlled cultural narratives. Populations aren’t allowed to read books (as they ‘pollute thoughts’) or newspapers. Historians and keepers of truth are killed. The very language of liberty and resistance has been expunged. Murari crafts a world where paranoia is policy, there is a seeming banality everywhere—embodied in the ambiguous rebel group known as the Others—is as much an existential threat to the regime as it is a lifeline for the disillusioned populace. Almost everything seems dry, colourless and plastic. As Cyomared’s past and present motives are questioned, several other characters get added and the novel edges toward a national election, which looms like a theatrical performance rather than a legitimate democratic process. It’s in this final act that the stakes escalate: Will Cyomared play a role in toppling the president? The answers, while offered, are not always narratively satisfying. The multiple romantic entanglements feel scattered, and the dialogues lacks the emotional depth needed to carry such an intensely political narrative.

Murari’s thematic ambition is clear: Chicanery is less interested in a linear plot than in diagnosing how democracies die—not in a flash, but through the slow normalization of repression and banality. He suggests that bureaucracy, when paired with ideology, can be as brutal as open violence. The ordinary becomes insidious. The everyday, dangerous.

Where the book falters is in its inability to flesh out its characters beyond their political roles making it sound more of a suspenseful critique than a true thriller. The tension and violence come across as structural and didactic, rather than emotional and visceral. Still, at its most strongest, Chicanery reads like an elegy for the utopian ideals of liberty and freedom—and a stark warning of how easily those ideals can be rewritten or erased by those in power.

In a world increasingly shaped by manufactured narratives and algorithmic control, Murari’s fictional regime feels disturbingly close. Chicanery is not flawless, but the bureaucratisation of life is prescient.