It has been a while since I\u2019ve read a mystery. This one was unique – a history\/mystery mix set in 1950\u2019s Bombay, India, just after Partition. The main character is the first female police investigator, and so we join her in her struggles to deal with prejudiced coworkers, bosses, family members, and even regular people on the street who can\u2019t imagine a woman doing what had been a man\u2019s job for so long. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh, and she also has to solve a murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thought the book was well-balanced between telling the history of that time along with telling a compelling story of a murder. Thanks to the history the possible motives suddenly multiply and make her task even harder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was an entertaining book but I sometimes felt like it was a little too formulaic – it has all the necessary beats of a detective novel, which sometimes pulled me out of the story and setting. The big reveal at the end had a Scooby-Do feeling to it – with every detail fully explained. As long as we are inventing why not invent a little more?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The series continues, but I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019ll keep reading. Next I am reading The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It has been a while since I\u2019ve read a mystery. This one was unique – a history\/mystery mix set in 1950\u2019s Bombay, India, just after Partition. The main character is the first female police investigator, and so we join her in her struggles to deal with prejudiced coworkers, bosses, family members, and even regular people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-3845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-101","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}