Murder Under a Red Moon

Starred review from January 23, 2023
Set in 1921 Bangalore, Nagendra’s superb sequel to 2022’s The Bangalore Detectives Club plunges amateur sleuth Kaveri Murthy, a student of mathematics and admirer of Sherlock Holmes, into a case involving the family of her physician husband, Ramu. Kaveri’s mother-in-law, Bhargavi, beseeches her to use her skills to help a cousin of Bhargavi’s, Shanthi Sharma. Shanthi’s husband’s factory, Sampangi Mills, is facing unexpected financial problems, and Shanthi suspects her daughter’s fiancé of embezzling from the business. Kaveri reluctantly agrees to review the accounts to see if she can validate Shanthi’s suspicion, only to wind up probing the shooting murder of a person connected with Sampangi Mills, on whose corpse is mysteriously found Kaveri’s magnifying glass chain that went missing earlier. Ramu assists in the digging, along with a motley group of allies, including a Muslim policeman’s wife. Assured pacing matches equally assured prose, and Nagendra brings the political tensions of India’s colonial period to life without overwhelming the crafty whodunit plot. Fans of Abir Mukherjee’s Wyndham and Banerjee novels will find much to like. Agent: Priya Doraswamy, Lotus Literary.

February 15, 2023
Here's an amateur detective to cheer for: Kaveri Murthy, 19 and newly married, an Indian woman living in India in the early twentieth century under the restrictive rule of the British Raj and the rigid expectations of her own social class, manages to surmount these obstacles to solve crimes. The real feat here is that Murthy's sleuthing is both excruciatingly exciting and entirely believable. This, the second in the Bangalore Detectives mystery series, is set in 1921, and starts with Kaveri's mother-in-law taking Kaveri to meet a famous swami to receive his blessing, designed to aid her in bearing many sons (not in Kaveri's plan). The mother-in-law also insists that Kaveri meet with her cousin, the wife of a wealthy woolen-mill owner who suspects someone in the family is embezzling from his factory. The plan is to have Kaveri, who studies mathematics, inspect the books on the night of the blood moon eclipse, bad omen, when everyone except evildoers stays inside. Kaveri discovers a body and her own locket clutched in the corpse's hand. Kaveri now confronts both a murder and an attempt to frame her. Kaveri's Detectives Club, brilliantly composed of women from all levels of society, from policeman's wife to prostitute, fans out to help Kaveri solve a murder that threatens her own life. Splendid.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.