Huzzah! An enticing historical crime novel!

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A Rising man (Sam Wyndham #1)   by Abir Mukherjee


The understated discourse by Captain Sam Wyndham is up there with the best of them.
In the opening page Wyndham's statement sets the tone, "When you think you’ve seen it all, it’s nice to find that a killer can still surprise you." A British official has been murdered, a threatening note stuffed in his mouth addressed to the overlords, the crown raj.
It's 1919, post the war. Captain Wyndham, formerly of Scotland Yard has taken a posting in Calcutta.
He displays a certain jaundiced attitude covering an inner Boy Scout hopefulness.
Up against corruption, home grown terrorists (fighters for home rule and independence from Britain), Wyndham's introductory case is that of this official murdered in an alley in the more sordid parts of the city. In a place he should not have been! And it happens outside a brothel!
The trail will take Wyndham from the heights of government, to the most powerful businessmen in the country,and to H Division's Secret Service headquarters, into to the very bowels of the bazaar and the squalor therein.
Accompanied by his new sidekicks, the quite unpleasant Inspector Digby and wonderfully understated Sergeant Surrender-not Banerjee. The conversations between these three are truly the stuff of the past. Delivered in such an understated fashion, I just laughed at so many places, when my jaw wasn't dropping.
I am so hooked!

A NetGalley ARC

*****

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