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Tanavan. Tanavan was created by the Indian author Pandita Canketi Makalinka Nateca Castiri and appeared in five stories and two novels and short story collections from 1894 to 1914, beginning with Tanavan enra Polis Nipunan Kantupititta Arputa Kurankal.

Tanavan is a Tamil policeman modeled on Dick Donovan. Tanavan is active in and around Madras.

* I'm including the Tanavan stories and novels in the Best of the Encyclopedia list because of their historical importance. Tanavan was one of the first series crime-fighters in Indian detective and mystery fiction, preceding Sherlock Holmes in India by a few years. The choice of Dick Donovan as the character on which to base Tanavan meant that Pandita Castiri would have a wide range of source material from which to draw, although Castiri's later Tanavan fictions were entirely her own work. The Tanavan series was the first by an Indian woman. And using the Dick Donovan stories as source material meant that Castiri could draw on the horror and suspense/thriller genres, as the Dick Donovan series did, rather than sticking solely to detective and mystery fiction. 

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