Death of a Lesser God

Name: Death of a Lesser God
Brand: Hachette UK
Availability: InStock
Author: Vaseem Khan
ISBN: 9781399707633

Author: Vaseem Khan

Series: Malabar House Series

Narrator: Maya Saroya

Unabridged: 11 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Published: 08/10/2023

Categories: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Historical Fiction, Suspense & Thriller, Crime

Synopsis

In the fourth rip-roaring thriller in the award-winning Malabar House series, Persis and Archie travel to the old colonial capital of Calcutta, where they collide head-on with the prejudices and bloody politics of an era engulfed in flame.

Can a white man receive justice in post-colonial India?
Bombay, 1950

James Whitby, sentenced to death for the murder of prominent lawyer and former Quit India activist Fareed Mazumdar, is less than two weeks from a date with the gallows. In a last-ditch attempt to save his son, Whitby's father, arch-colonialist, Charles Whitby, forces a new investigation into the killing.

The investigation leads Inspector Persis Wadia of the Bombay Police to the old colonial capital of Calcutta, where, with the help of Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, she uncovers a possible link to a second case, the brutal murder of an African-American G.I. during the Calcutta Killings of 1946.

How are the cases connected? If Whitby didn't murder Mazumdar, then who did? And why?

(P) 2023 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

About Vaseem Khan

Vaseem Khan's acclaimed Baby Ganesh Agency crime series won the Shamus Award in the US, with The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra selected by the Sunday Times as one of the 40 best crime novels published 2015-2020, now translated into 16 languages. The first novel in the Malabar House series, Midnight at Malabar House, won the CWA Historical Dagger 2021 and was shortlisted for the Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year Award. Vaseem lives in London.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Emma

This is a wonderful series and this has to be the best yet. From Bombay to Calcutta, Persis is given the impossible task of saving a white man from execution for the murder of an Indian lawyer. This does not go down well given the hubris of Indian independence. Persis (as usual) overcomes the severe......more

Goodreads review by Kate

I appear to have missed an episode of Persis's life (no idea why) so some of this book was less clear to me than it should have been had I read The Lost Man of Bombay but it didn't spoil my enjoyment of this book at all. In this book Persis is tasked with proving that a young man condemned to death......more

Goodreads review by Peter

Inspector Persis Wadia is the first female officer in the Indian police service, a move seen as enlightened and forward thinking by politicians, but the reality is this bastion of masculinity has no idea what to do with her. So, she finds herself sidelined into the backwater of Malabar House where p......more

Goodreads review by K. Daley

Persis, the much maligned 1st female police officer in India is secretly charged by her misogynist boss to investigate the conviction of a white man for murdering an Indian lawyer. She can't tell anyone what she's doing or why. She soon determines that the key lies in Calcutta and goes there - finan......more

Quotes

Beautifully written and a fascinating insight into the turbulence of post independence India Peter May