Death of a Lesser God, Vaseem Khan
Death of a Lesser God, Vaseem Khan
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Death of a Lesser God

Author: Vaseem Khan

Narrator: Maya Saroya

Unabridged: 11 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/10/2023


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 is the author of several award-winning crime series including the Baby Ganesh Agency adventures, set in modern Mumbai, and the Malabar House historical crime novels, set in 1950s Bombay.His first book, The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra, was selected by the Sunday Times as one of the 40 best crime novels published in 2015-2020, and has been translated into 17 languages. Midnight at Malabar House, the first in the Malabar House series, won the Crime Writers' Association Historical Dagger.Vaseem has won numerous awards for his work, including, most recently, the Fingerprint Award for Historical Crime Novel of the Year for City of Destruction, the fifth in the Malabar House series. Vaseem is also the author of The Girl in Cell A, a psychological thriller set in small town America, and Quantum of Menace, the first in a series featuring Q from the world of James Bond.


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

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