Review of The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey (2018, Soho Crime)

Bombay, 1921. Perveen Mistry, the first female solicitor in the city, takes over the administration of the will of Omar Farid from her father. Having survived a sham marriage and gaining her law degree in Oxford, she is keen to prove her worth to the family business. As she goes through the estate papers of the wealthy Muslim mill owner, she notices that his three wives have signed away their inheritance to a charity. Wanting to be certain of their wishes, she travels to their bungalow in the desirable district of Malabar Hill. The three women are living with their children in strict seclusion, never leaving the women’s quarters, forbidden from talking to or being touched by unknown men. There she is confronted by the guardian appointed by the late-husband to look after the wives’ affairs, who is unhappy that she is questioning how he running the estate. After talking to the women, she is suspicious about the set-up; even more so when there is a murder in the house shortly after she leaves. While the police rush to conclusions, Perveen works with her best friend, Alice Hobson-Jones, the English daughter of a senior government official, and her father to solve the case.

The Widows of Malabar Hill is the first book in Perveen Mistry series set in 1920s Bombay (now Mumbai). After studying for a law degree in Oxford, Perveen has joined her father’s law firm as the city’s first female solicitor. She’s keen to establish herself and build a successful career, hoping to eventually become a lawyer and undertake court cases, though women are barred from such work. In the meantime, she helps her father prepare cases and undertake more routine work relating to family and commercial affairs. In this initial outing, her father asks her to take over the legal aspects of the legacy of a wealthy Muslim mill owner who has left three wives and a handful of children. Perveen notices some odd things about how the wives’ guardian is administering the estate and shortly after she leaves the family home a murder is committed. Perveen aids the police, but unhappy with how they are handling the case, she starts her own investigation. Massey does a nice job of historically contextualising the tale with respect to the multicultural nature of Indian society, the position and roles of women within these cultures, the laws that shaped different communities, and governance by the British. There’s also a strong emphasis on the workings of family and food and fashion. The characterisation is nicely done, especially Perveen, who is smart, determined, and politically astute, but also a little naïve, and her somewhat bolshie English friend, Alice Hobson-Jones. The plot with respect to the bereaved family and the murder was interesting, and nicely constructed, though there were a little too many coincident holding it together in terms of connections between characters and places. Where the telling suffers, however, is Perveen’s extended back story, which not only broke the flow of the mystery tale but was drawn out. The back story is important for understanding Perveen and her approach to representing women, but its inclusion as a detailed separate strand took the pace out of the story and meant the key part of the investigation doesn’t start until two thirds of the way through. Nonetheless, Perveen, the setup and context are interesting and I look forward to giving the second book in the series a read.

Review of Smoke and Ashes by Abir Mukherjee (2018, Harvill Secker)

Calcutta, 1921. Police officer Captain Sam Wyndham has a serious opium habit which he feeds by visiting dens in the early hours. When members of the vice squad raid one of his haunts he escapes up onto the roofs and hides. En route he encounters a body, his eyes cut out and stab wounds to his chest. A couple of days later he is assigned to investigate the death of a nurse who exhibits the same wounds. Unable to formally link the two murders, he and his trusted India sergeant, Surrender-not Banerjee start to dig for answers, despite the fact that military intelligence would clearly like them to stop. To add to Wyndham’s woes he’s also charged with persuading the local Indian nationalist leader, Chitta Ranjan Das, to drop his non-violent campaign given the impending visit of Prince Edward to the city. With tension rising, a murderer on the loose and the local population being whipped up into a frenzy ahead of the state visit, Wyndham finds himself at the centre of a potential explosive situation.

Smoke and Ashes is the third book in the Wyndham and Banerjee series set in Calcutta in the years after the First World War. In this outing the pair find themselves trying to solve a series of brutal murders, while also trying to suppress the activities of Indian nationalists campaigning for independence. They are under pressure to fulfil both duties before the visit of Prince Edward, the heir to the British crown, on Christmas Eve. To complicate matters, Wyndham’s opium habit is exposed and military intelligence would prefer it if he drops his snooping with regards to the murders. Mukherjee tells the tale utilising real historical events and a couple of real-life characters. While it is an interesting story, it is held together by some coincidence plot devices, such as Wyndham happening to be in an opium den that is raided, and Banerjee being a close family friend of the Indian nationalist leading the local demonstrations. Moreover, while the story does build to some tension points, it is more linear than the previous two outings, and felt more staged. That said, it’s still an engaging and entertaining tale.

Review of A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage, 2017)

India, 1920. Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee of the Calcutta Police Force are escorting Prince Adhir from a meeting with the Viceroy at Government House to the Grand Hotel when they are forced to stop and the Prince assassinated. The following day they corner the assassin, who takes his own life. As far as the Viceroy is concerned that is the end of the matter. Wyndham, however, wants to know who send the assassin, the answer to which he believes is in the kingdom of Sampalpore. The Viceroy expressly forbids Wyndham from pursuing the case as Sampalpore is a semi-autonomous state, run by a Maharajah and a local government. Since Banerjee knew the Prince he is sent to attend his funeral, with Wyndham taking holiday leave to accompany him. Their real aim is to continue the investigation and they soon become embroiled in the complex family and power struggles inside the Sampalpore court, which reveals many suspects. The question is can they untangle the conspiracy before they too fall victims to a killer intent on reshaping Sampalpore’s future.

A Necessary Evil is the second book in the Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee series set in 1920s India. In this outing, the two detectives travel from Calcutta to Sampalpore, an Indian state rich from trading diamonds and run by an aging Maharajah, to investigate the assassination of a Prince. While Banerjee is there as an official attendee at the funeral, Wyndham has travelled on holiday leave, having been told to drop the case which has seemingly been concluded with the suicide of the assassin. While the Maharajah asks Wyndham to find the power behind his son’s killer, few of the royal court and government are pleased with the outsider’s presence, and their investigation is actively hindered. The tale has all the hallmarks of a very good police procedural: an interesting puzzle, well-drawn and engaging characters, a balance of investigation with character development and back story, strong sense of place, nice pacing, plenty of intrigue and twists and turns, and interesting framing and contextualisation. With respect to the latter, Mukherjee does a very nice job in detailing the complexities of Indian society, politics, and pre- and colonial history without these ever swamping or distracting from the investigation at the heart of the story. The result is a thoughtful, entertaining and colourful tale. A series that I’ll certainly keep following.

Review of The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan (2015, Mulholland Books)

After a heart attack, Inspector Ashwin Chopra is forced to retire from the Mumbai police force. On his last day at work he inherits two mysteries. The first is the seeming suicide of a young man, found drowned in a puddle. The second is the delivery of a young elephant, an inheritance from an uncle. His superiors are not interested in investigating the first, and the building manager is opposed to letting him house the second. Chopra was always an honest cop and he knows what he’s going to do with respect to the dead man – complete the investigation as a civilian. He’s less certain what to do about the elephant, though his wife Poppy is adamant the building manager is not going to get her way. Warned off by senior police officers, Chopra keeps digging, navigating the bustling city and it sharp social divisions, following the few clues that he has. It soon turns into his most dangerous case to date and to his surprise, his new elephant, Ganesha, proves to be an adept sidekick.

The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra is the first book in the Baby Ganesh Agency Investigation set in Mumbai. Ganesha is a baby elephant and is Chopra’s unexpected inheritance. The book fits into the loose genre of somewhat mystical, charming cozies, such as Colin Cotterill’s Dr Siri series and Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Lady Detective Agency series. The tale follows Chopra’s attempts to solve a murder of a young man despite being officially retired from the police and to work out what to do about looking after Ganesha. It’s a light and light-hearted read, despite the corruption and violence underpinning the case under investigation. Chopra and his wife Poppy make for a charming couple, Ganesha is an interesting twist, and the story picks up on Indian themes of storytelling, with its nod to the use of mystical gods and Bollywood story structure. However, the charm and sense of place doesn’t fully compensate for a linear and straightforward plot and a tale that lacks substance and depth. Overall, an entertaining tale with a nice hook and lead character.

Review of A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage)

1919, Calcutta. Captain Sam Wyndham, former Scotland Yard detective, has arrived in India after surviving the trenches of the Great War to return to an empty home, his wife dead from influenza. Only a week in the city and he is asked to investigate the death of a senior British civil servant found stabbed in an alley behind a brothel. He’s partnered by Inspector Digby, a long-time police officer in India, and Sergeant ‘Surrender-not’ Banerjee, a Cambridge graduate who has defied his family wishes to join the police. While trying to orientate himself to colonial rule and policing, and local, national and cultural politics, Wyndham makes slow progress, made more difficult by the interference of the military police. To add to his load he’s also asked to investigate a train robbery. The evidence suggests that the murder and robbery are related, the work of Indian separatists, but Wyndham is not convinced.

A Rising Man is the first book in the Captain Wyndham series set in Calcutta just after the First World War. A historical murder mystery, there are a couple of compelling strengths to the story. First, the story is a nicely told crime tale, with the perpetrator and reason for the crime reasonably well covered until the reveal. Second, there is a good sense of place, culture and political context. Mukherjee details the segregated geography of the city, the power-laden architecture of the British Raj, and streetscape of Indian neighbourhoods. He also does a nice job of detailing the inherent racism and expressions of colonial British power, and forms of violent and non-violent resistance of Indians, as well as the complex social relations between British, Indian and Anglo-Indians. Where I struggled a little was with the character of Wyndham, who I couldn’t quite pin down – somehow he seemed both worldly and naïve, resolute but uncertain. This was perhaps personified by being a drug-addict-cum-recreational user – he lost control to the cravings, yet was still in control of his habit. He should have had depth, but somehow seemed a little hollow. The ending was also reliant on a plot device I’m never really comfortable with, which I won't discuss as it'll provide a spoiler. Nonetheless, the positives really outshone my nitpicking and I look forward to reading the next book in the series, A Necessary Evil.

Review of Mrs D’Silva’s Detective Instincts and the Shaitan of Calcutta by Glen Peters (Carnival/Parthian, 2009)

It’s 1960 and Mrs D’Silva is a young, Anglo-Indian, widow trying to make ends meet in Calcutta having lost her husband to a rail accident five years previously. She teaches at Don Bosco’s Catholic School, which her ten year old son Errol also attends. On a picnic visit to Our Lady shrine in Bandle Errol discovers the mutilated body of a young woman washed up on the bank of the Hooghly river, a tributary of the Ganges. The girl had been raised in the Loreto convent and had recently married a much older man who has converted to Christianity. In the absence of any compelling evidence, the death is ruled as suicide by a judge. Two of the girl’s friends, Anil – a former pupil of Mrs D’Silva - and Philomena suspect foul play. Unbeknownst to Mrs D’Silva, both have become involved in a Mao-backed communist movement and are active in a campaign against a British owned engineering company. At one of the protests a manager in the company is stabbed to death with Anil’s knife and he is arrested for murder. When Mrs D’Silva visits him in prison he protests his innocence and she vows to try and clear his name. A few days later he is found hanging in his cell in suspicious circumstances. It seems as if Dutta, the ruthless Shaitan of the communist movement, will stop at nothing to secure a new India free of the legacy of colonial rule. Despite the obvious dangers, Mrs D’Silva in her own understated way tries to help uncover the truth.

The back cover describes Mrs D’Silva’s Detective Instincts as a ‘vivid and engaging novel of recipes and murder, intrigue and romance’. Food and culture certainly feature strongly in the story and Peters takes great care to detail sights, sounds, and particularly the tastes, of the melting pot of 1960s India, just a few years after independence. To that end the book is informative and provides strong historical contextualisation. The story, for me, however never really amounted to more than an okay read; a relatively pleasant sojourn but failing to turn into a real page turner. I think this mainly to do with (somewhat ironically) taste. Mrs D’Silva is effectively an Anglo-Indian cozy that fairly gently rolls along, so that despite the murders and political intrigue it never really builds up a head of steam. In the first half of the book, the plot meanders aimlessly until Mrs D’Silva discovers her rather shaky detective instincts and the story starts to gain some structure and purpose. The characterization is fine without being stellar and while Mrs D’Silva herself is ably drawn I have no particular longing to catch up with her on any of further adventures. For me, the thing that is most striking about the book is its production values. The novel is beautifully presented and feels like something invested with time and passion. It’s just a shame that the story itself didn’t instil the same in me, although I know that it has received very favourable reviews by others – see:

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