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

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. The 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

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:-