Death in the East by Abir Mukherjee

 

First Line: The birds were killing themselves.

 

1905, London. Young Constable Sam Wyndham is walking his usual East End beat when he's summoned to the scene of a murder. It's Bessie Drummond, an old flame of Wyndham's. She's been found brutally beaten to death in her room with the door locked from the inside. Although Wyndham vows to bring her killer to justice, he's unsuccessful.

 

1922, India. Captain Sam Wyndham is in Assam, at the ashram of a monk who's been successful in curing people with addictions to opium. Wyndham knows he, too, must be successful in beating his addiction because his career is at stake. 

All is going well until Wyndham sees a man from his past in London. A man he believed to be dead. A man he never wanted to see again. And he knows that he's going to need the help of his friend and colleague Sergeant Banerjee because he's convinced this man from his past is out for revenge.

~

Abir Mukherjee's Wyndham & Banerjee historical mystery series has been one that I've greatly enjoyed, but I opened Death in the East with a bit of trepidation. You see, I have few "hot buttons" when it comes to my reading, but I'd rather not spend time with recurring characters who are alcoholics or drug addicts. Sam Wyndham's opium addiction had certainly worn the bloom off the rose of my reading enjoyment, and I was afraid Death in the East was going to be more of the same. 

 

Hallelujah, it wasn't!

 

To be honest, I'm more a fan of Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee than I am of Sam Wyndham. (The lazy Brits call the sergeant "Surrender-Not".) Banerjee doesn't appear until the end of the book, but what an ending he helps bring about!

The chapters occurring in 1905 London put readers in contact with a young, still idealistic Wyndham, one of those annoying men who always gives more credence to attractive women. (Do pretty females lie? Never! How could you think such a thing?) The London sections began to drag a bit, so I was happy when all the necessary backstory was given so the focus could remain in India. 

So far, I've made it sound as though I don't particularly like Sam Wyndham, and that's not true. He has one quote in Death in the East that I love:

I've never understood what drives the powerful to oppress the weak, or what need the many have to harass those different from them. Maybe it was just easier: to blame someone else, someone different, for all the shit that happened to you. Someone who couldn't answer back and point out the obvious: that your troubles were mostly caused by people who looked like you, not people who were different. Maybe that was why I'd always been on the side of the underdog. Some called it contrarian.  I just thought of it as being decent.

 

This is something that I could have said about myself, but what gives this quote even more emphasis is how Surendranath Banerjee turns it on its head at the end of the book. With flashes of humor and a very different perspective, Banerjee arrives to save the day. I love how this young man has grown over the course of this series. Wyndham always used to have the upper hand in their partnership, but Banerjee's confidence and abilities have grown, and he can easily stand shoulder to shoulder with the captain. 

Death in the East is a very satisfying story, from Wyndham's experiences with drug rehabilitation all the way to the conclusion of an event that has bedeviled the captain since 1905. Moreover, I am really looking forward to the next book in this series. I do believe that Surendranath Banerjee has some surprises in store for all of us, and I can't wait to find out what they are.

Death in the East by Abir Mukherjee

ISBN: 9781643134680

Pegasus Books © 2020

Hardcover, 417 pages

 

Historical Mystery, #4 Wyndham & Banerjee mystery

Rating: A

Source: Purchased from The Poisoned Pen.

Smoke and Ashes by Abir Mukherjee

First Line: It's not unusual to find a corpse in a funeral parlour.

Feeding a drug addiction he's had since his service during World War I, Captain Sam Wyndham is in an opium den when it's raided by police. In a drug-addled haze, he stumbles across a dead body while making his escape. The very next morning, he's summoned to the scene of a murder and sees the same gruesome, ritualistic injuries as the ones on the body of the night before. There's a deranged killer on the loose, but Sam can't say anything about the body in the opium den because it could cost him his career. He's definitely going to need the help of his quick-witted Sergeant Surrender-Not Banerjee to solve the murders before someone else dies.

I have to be honest and say that it took me a long time to get into Smoke and Ashes, and it's got everything to do with me and nothing to do with the book because I really enjoy this series. The book starts out with Wyndham on a bender, and I have very little patience for fictional characters addicted to alcohol or drugs. Once I'd reminded myself over and over again that Mukherjee's A Necessary Evil made my Best Reads List of 2018, I picked the book up again and began to read. I'm glad I did.

Wyndham is no fool. He realizes that--with that first body he stumbled across in the opium den and the subsequent police raid-- he's been set up. Someone knows of his addiction, and that someone is using it against him. Wyndham gets himself together to wean himself off the drugs. Once he started avoiding opium dens, my enjoyment of the story increased, and so did the pace of the book.

The mystery and the characters are so strong, but I carried away two major things from reading Smoke and Ashes. One, Mukherjee is wonderful at depicting how unsettled India was in the 1920s-- and how good the British Raj was at making decisions that kept the Indians riled up. They brought about their own doom. The second thing that really impressed itself upon me was what an uncomfortable position Wyndham's Indian sergeant is in. No one in his family wanted him to join the Raj's police force, and many family members shun him. But Surrender-Not is as stubborn as the British mispronunciation of his given name. He is good at his job. He believes in his job. He also believes India should be free from British rule. Like I said, his position is not an easy one.

If you enjoy historical mysteries with strong stories, strong characters, and a setting so vivid that you're drawn right into the thick of things, you can't go wrong with Abir Mukherjee's Wyndham and Banerjee series. I also find that these books make excellent companion pieces to Sujata Massey's Perveen Mistry historical series that take place during the same time frame, so keep those in mind, too!

Smoke and Ashes by Abir Mukherjee

ISBN:  9781911215158

Harvill Secker © 2018

Paperback, 352 pages

Historical Mystery, #3 Captain Sam Wyndham mystery

Rating: A

Source: Purchased from Book Depository.


 

A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee

First Line: It's not often you see a man with a diamond in his beard.

India, 1920. Witness to the assassination of a Maharajah's son, Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee of the Calcutta Police Force find the killer, but they also find evidence that suggests the plot against the heir may have begun at home in the kingdom he was to inherit. The two swiftly find themselves aboard the royal train heading for Sambalpore, home to tigers, elephants, diamond mines, and the ethereal Palace of the Sun.

It doesn't take them long to learn that the kingdom is filled with suppressed conflict. There are three vastly different heirs to the throne. A mere infant, a playboy, and the modernizer, who was assassinated. As Wyndham and Banerjee try to unravel the mystery, they find themselves entangled in a world where those in power live by their own rules-- and they may pay for their quest for truth and justice with their lives.

I enjoyed A Necessary Evil so much that, when I finished, I had no idea the book was almost four hundred pages long; that's how fast-moving the pace is. It also has a marvelous, twisty plot made even more so by the fact that a male investigator has no access to the zenana, the part of a Muslim or Hindu household reserved for women only.

The setting of this book is absolutely marvelous, as Sam Wyndham (late of the British Expeditionary Forces and Scotland Yard) moves from the bustling, mostly modern, city of Calcutta to a maharajah's kingdom. One minute he's being driven in a silver-plated Rolls Royce to dine with people whose clothing is fastened with diamond buttons, and the next he's participating in a tiger hunt followed by a dance where the host is an expert at the Turkey Trot. Sam is an interesting mix of modern and traditional. Fighting in the trenches during the First World War has knocked a lot of the old nonsense out of him, but not all. Living in India as the British Raj is winding down and being partnered with an Indian sergeant means Wyndham is always being faced with new attitudes.

The reader also learns all sorts of interesting things about the culture and politics of India during this time. With laws such as the Doctrine of Lapse, the British should never have been surprised when India insisted on regaining its freedom. (If an Indian ruler died without a direct heir, or if he was what the British termed incompetent, the government would seize control of his kingdom and all its assets.)

The biggest learning experience of all for Sam was finding out how to conduct an investigation when so many of the people he needed to question were in purdah-- females in seclusion. It was a world completely beyond his comprehension, and one that made the mystery more difficult for him to solve-- even though someone blatantly gave him the key to solving it.

I found A Necessary Evil to be a wonderful mystery and the perfect companion piece to Sujata Massey's The Widows of Malabar Hill. I'm also looking forward with a great deal of anticipation to Abir Mukherjee's next book.

A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee

eISBN: 9781681777283

Pegasus Books © 2018

eBook, 381 pages

Historical Mystery, #2 Capt. Sam Wyndham mystery

Rating: A+

Source: Net Galley


 

A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee

First Line: At least he was well dressed.

It's 1919, and former Scotland Yard detective Captain Sam Wyndham has just arrived in Calcutta. After his experiences during World War I, he is longing for a fresh start, but his very first investigation concerns the death of a British government official who was found with a note stuffed in his mouth warning the British to leave India, or else....

Wyndham is under pressure to solve the case before the streets of the city erupt into violence. He has two colleagues to help him: the arrogant Inspector Digby and Sergeant "Surrender-not" Banerjee, one of the few Indians to be recruited into the CID.

When I first picked up A Rising Man and began to read, I read it as I would any other historical mystery. I soon fell headfirst into a major roadblock: the slow-as-treacle pace. Fortunately, before I gave up and moved to another book, I realized that the setting of this book is absolutely fabulous and well worth the price of admission.

Mukherjee has written this book in such a way that readers get to see Calcutta in 1919 from several different points of view. It is a city-- and a country-- just beginning its quest for freedom in earnest. The vast majority of Indians do not wish to be a part of the British Raj. There are revolutionaries showing us why India wants its freedom. There are British bureaucrats who-- above all else-- wish to maintain their precarious status quo. There are Indians like Sergeant Banerjee who want the British out but want to learn how to govern and how to fight crime first. And into this mix comes Sam Wyndham, who's survived a long meat-grinder of a war with few illusions left. He's fought side by side with brave and honorable men of all races and creeds, so he doesn't always see situations from his superiors' points of view. And speaking of points of view, there are several that some readers may find uncomfortable.

Once I settled down to read this book as historical fiction rather than as a mystery, I was much happier. Yes, the mystery is a good one, and Sam Wyndham is a finely drawn character, but it is the city of Calcutta that steals the show. I'm looking forward to Abir Mukherjee's next book with a great deal of interest.

A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee

eISBN: 9781681774169

Pegasus Books © 2017

eBook, 390 pages

Historical Mystery, #1 Sam Wyndham mystery

Rating: B+

Source: Net Galley