Tag Archives: Raj India

#BookReview ‘The Burning Grounds’ by Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers #crime #historical #India #Raj

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It is three years since The Shadows of Men when Suren Banerjee fled Calcutta for Europe. In The Burning Grounds, fifth in the Wyndham & Banerjee series by Abir Mukherjee, Suren returns to the city and to his former colleague Captain Sam Wyndham. Both are facing difficult cases, each needs the other’s help but is reluctant to ask. Abir Mukherjee A man is found dead in the burning ghats of Calcutta. Wyndham, out of favour at the Imperial Police Force and trusted only with the most menial of cases, is sent to deal with the body. Except the corpse isn’t just anyone. He’s one of the city’s wealthiest businessmen, a patron of the arts, producer of a film being shot in Calcutta at this moment. He is admired wherever he goes. And now his throat has been cut.
Suren, who has returned home to India after his relationship in Paris with a French woman faltered, is drifting without a job, without authority. Then his cousin Dolly, a photographer, goes missing. Suren, desperate to find her, goes cap in hand to Wyndham. The reunion is awkward, both blame the other for the cause of Suren’s flight abroad. Begrudgingly, day by day, they work together, sniping, squabbling, resentful. Both are changed men and Calcutta is changing too. Dolly’s studio has been ransacked, no-one has seen her and Suren is frantic with worry. Meanwhile at a party a million miles away from the burning grounds, Sam meets a glamorous woman. Estelle Morgan is the Australian actress whose face is on the front pages of newspapers. They both enjoy a mild flirtation and Sam begins to wonder if there is a life for him beyond the grief for his dead wife and his more recent regrets at the failure of his on-off relationship with Annie Grant. But when he is charged with investigating the death of JP Mulllick, he must travel to Bishnupore to interview the film crew, he sees Estelle Morgan again. Suren goes too. More people die, none of them Dolly, but when the two cases, oh so different, are linked, Sam and Suren must learn to work together again.
Set against the last decades of the Raj, the success of these books is the laser focus on the relationship of two men who were born thousands of miles distant from each other. Intellectually they are on a level, in religious and cultural terms they are poles apart, but they find common ground in their belief in the triumph of right over wrong, the pursuit of criminality and along the way wrestle with cultural dilemmas, shames, beliefs and behaviours on both Anglo and Indian sides. As the country inches towards independence, the balance of power in the two men’s relationship adjusts too.
Excellent. This is a fine series of historical crime fiction.

Here are my reviews of the first five books in the Wyndham & Banerjee series:-
A RISING MAN #1WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
A NECESSARY EVIL #2WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
SMOKE AND ASHES #3WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
DEATH IN THE EAST #4WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
THE SHADOWS OF MEN #5WYNDHAM&BANERJEE

If you like this, try:-
‘My Name is Yip’ by Paddy Crewe
‘Leeward’ by Katie Daysh #1NIGHTINGALE&COURTNEY
‘The Silver Bone’ by Andrey Kurkov #1KYIVMYSTERIES

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE BURNING GROUNDS by Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-91l via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Angela Petch

#BookReview ‘Smoke and Ashes’ by Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers #crime #historical #India #Raj

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Captain Sam Wyndham is having a bad week. His opium addiction is keeping him awake at night. Two murders bearing the same grisly modus operandi have occurred. Non-violent protests by the Indian self-rule movement are intensifying, and the Prince of Wales is due to arrive in Calcutta. Smoke and Ashes by Abir Mukherjee starts at a pace and doesn’t stop. Abir MukherjeeThe story starts on December 21, 1921. Calcutta is a smouldering tinderbox of political unrest about to ignite. Wyndham and Sergeant ‘Surrender-not’ Banerjee expect the worst, both fear personal repercussions. Bannerjee’s family is close to one of the protest leaders, Chitta-Ranjan Das, while Wyndham fears for the safety of his Anglo-Indian ex-girlfriend Annie. When a Goan nurse is murdered, her body bears grisly wounds that Wyndham has seen only days before on another dead body. Except this was at an opium den. At first sight he’s not sure if the body is real or a fever dream. Second, his career will be over if he admits where he was. So not even Surendranath knows about the dead Chinaman found in the notorious Tangra district. Only Wyndham knows there may be a serial killer in Calcutta.
Mukherjee excels at highlighting the dichotomies, similarities and moral dilemnas of this huge continent with a population of 269 million ruled by a small number of British officials and military. Behaviour and manners play their part, in a way. When a protest demonstration takes place just before a newly-introduced curfew is due to start, the protestors and Gurkha soldiers observe each other. ‘It was still some minutes before six, and the troops stood their ground, bound by the rules of the curfew. The fact that the demonstration itself was illegal had been conveniently overlooked by all concerned. As usual, the whole thing felt like a game where both parties agreed which rules applied and which could be discounted. Rules, after all, were important.’
Wyndham and Bannerjee are caught in the moral trap experienced by those working for the Raj out of necessity but whose hearts are with the protestors. ‘To see a man as your enemy, you needed to hate him, and while it was easy to hate a man who fought you with bullets and bomns, it was bloody difficult to hate a man who opposed you by appealing to your own moral compass.’ When there’s a third murder, it begins to feel like revenge. But what for, and who is next. When they discover the answer they have minimal time to stop the attacker. Calcutta is grinding to a halt, Prince Edward is arriving, the protestors are gathering. Thousands could die. The last hundred pages are a breathless sprint.
This series is maturing nicely. Smoke and Ashes is a fascinating book, cleverly constructed with a pair of lead characters you care about. It’s a classic whodunnit set within the broader landscape of India’s political and social upheaval. Smoke and Ashes is third in this fascinating Raj-era police procedural series. Next is Death in the East.

Here are my reviews of the first two books in the Wyndham & Banerjee series:-
A RISING MAN #1WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
A NECESSARY EVIL #2WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
DEATH IN THE EAST #4WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
THE SHADOWS OF MEN #5WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
THE BURNING GROUNDS #6WYNDHAM&BANERJEE

If you like this, try:-
‘The Pure in Heart’ by Susan Hill #2SIMONSERRAILLER
‘Shroud for a Nightingale’ by PD James #4ADAMDALGLIESH
‘An Expert in Murder’ by Nicola Upson #1JOSEPHINETEY

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview SMOKE AND ASHES by Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8zc via @SandraDanby 

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Amanda Huggins