Books Set in Asia: Mumbai, India

Murder at the Grand Raj Palace, by Vaseem Khan (2018)

 

Ashwin Chopra is a retired police inspector who has started his own investigation agency.  Somehow, after his retirement, he was gifted with a baby elephant that he named Ganesha.  Ganesha follows wither Chopra or his wife, Poppy, everywhere … even to the posh Grand Raj Palace.

 

The novel begins when art collector Hollis Burbank was found dead in his hotel room with a knife in his chest.  He had just outbid a rival collector for a painting by one of India’s most famous artists.  The police commissioner is ready to call Burbank’s death a suicide, but the officer in charge thinks otherwise so calls Chopra to assist with the investigation.  When the commissioner learns that Chopra has been called in to assist, he quickly tells him to back off the official investigation.

 

Lisa Taylor, the art broker who convinced Burbank to go to Mumbai for the auction, then hires Chopra to continue with the murder investigation.  Lisa is a sexy young British woman who always seems to pop into Chopra’s investigation when Poppy is around.  Poppy, who has trying to plan a special 25^th wedding anniversary, begins to get jealous.

 

While Chopra is looking into the potential murder of Burbank, Poppy becomes involved in the wedding plans of two aristocratic families with a decades-long family feud.  The two families are ostensibly marrying to protect one family from the brink of bankruptcy.  Poppy’s advice to the young bride to follow her heart, leading the bride-to-be to vanish without a trace.

 

Meanwhile, Burbank, it seems, was a very unpleasant man.  No one liked him and he made enemies everywhere he went.  Thus, Chopra quickly comes up with a long list of potential killers.  The list grows longer when Chopra learned that 30 years earlier, Burbank was known as Roger Penzance and was a chemical engineer at a company involved with a chemical leak.  The chemical disaster had been covered up, but some survivors continued to harbor guilt.

 

This mystery was light-hearted and fun to read.  The solution came with a twist, but was very satisfying.  This is a delightful little “cozy mystery” that takes place mostly at the Grand Raj Palace Hotel in Mumbai, India.  It’s the fourth mystery in the Baby Ganesh Agency Investigation series, although it’s the first one I read.  I will definitely go back and read this series from the beginning.

 

Read:  May 18, 2021

 

5 Stars

 

Books set in the Untied States: New Hampshire

Leaving Time, by Jodi Picoult (2014)  5 Stars

Leaving Time is told through the eyes of several characters:  There is Jenna, a thirteen-year old girl, who has spent the past 10 years wondering why her mother left her when she was three-years old.  There is Alice Metcalf, Jenna’s mother who has spent her entire professional life studying elephants, specifically how elephants experience grief.  There is Serenity Jones, a washed up psychic.  There is Virgil Stanhope, a former cop who investigated the tragedy at the elephant sanctuary 10 years earlier.  Ostensibly he committed suicide on the day of his promotion, only to reappear as Victor, a private investigator.  And finally, there are the elephants residing in an elephant sanctuary in New Hampshire.

Alice had been studying elephants in Africa when she meets Thomas Metcalf, who ran an elephant sanctuary in the States.  They have a brief night of passion, before he returns to New Hampshire.  They stay in touch, but when Alice discovers she is pregnant, she visits Thomas in New Hampshire.  They wed before they really know each other and she learns of his mental illness.  She stays with Thomas working at the elephant sanctuary while trying to continue her research.

The novel unwinds between the present and the past, and slowly the reader begins to piece together the tragedy that occurred at the elephant sanctuary 10 years earlier, leaving Jenna motherless with the mysterious disappearance of her mother.  Virgil was one of the cops who investigated the original events, but realized at the time the case was handled badly.  He hopes to redeem himself by helping Jenna search for her mother.

Through Alice’s voice, we learn about elephant behavior.  Elephants grieve for lost members of the herd, and when a mother loses a calf, it will stay with the body for days as it grieves. Picoult did her research, and as noted in the Afterwards, the bits about the elephants are based on real elephants at the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, an actual sanctuary for elephants in captivity.

The ending, while fitting for the novel, requires a bit of magical thinking.  It does explain, however, some of the seemingly inconsistence in Jenna’s life.  I enjoyed this novel and read it in two days.

Read:  March 12, 2016