Sometimes when I am in the library, a
book catches my eye and I just pick it up without having a clue what it is
about. A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee
was one such book and it is a gem.
Set in the waning years of the British
Empire in India, the book begins in Calcutta in early 1919. Captain Sam Wyndham, a former detective with
the Scotland Yard, was seeking an escape from England and is recovering both
from the recent death of his wife and the trauma of having survived the
battlefront of World War I. He has
joined the British Imperial Police Force.
Within days of his arrival in India, he
becomes the lead detective in a sensitive and political murder
investigation. Senior political officer,
Alexander MacAuley, was found murdered outside of a brothel in a seedy party of
town. His body was mutated body was
found with a scrap of paper stuffed into his mouth, which contained a
not-so-subtle threat indicating that the Indian terrorists opposing British
rule were responsible for the murder.
Wyndham has been assigned two other
police officers to assist with the investigation ~ Inspector Digby and Sergeant
Banerjee. Digby is an arrogant British
officer who strongly supports the British rule over the “natives.” Banjerjee is British educated, but
Indian-born, and because the British are unable to pronounce his name, call him
Surrender-not Banerjee. It looks like a
political murder, but is it?
India in 1919 is ready for
revolution. India has been under British
colonial administration for a century and the colonials are making a fortune at
the expense of the Indians. The Indians
are ready for their own Home Rule and pockets of terrorist cells are beginning
to make trouble for the British. In
addition, during the period of British rule, British men married Indian women
and now their offspring are outcasts in both cultures. The author deftly recounts the tensions and
between the British and the Indians in this marvelous novel.
The author is grew up in England and is
the son of Indian immigrants, thus his interest in colonial India. Captain Wyndham will appear in a new book, A Necessary Evil, that was just
published in June 2017. I will
definitely look forward to meeting up with this detective again!
Read: June 1, 2017
5 Stars
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