A necessary evil by Abir Mukherjee
Vintage Publishing, 2017. ISBN 9781911215127
(Age: Senior secondary to adult) Highly recommended. Themes: Crime
fiction, India, Historical fiction, Racism, British Raj. When
Captain Sam Wyndham and his sergeant Surrender-not Banerjee attend a
local prince who is in Calcutta for talks about cooperation between
the principalities in 1920's India, they did not expect to be
witnesses to the man's assassination. Surrender-not is mystified,
the prince was an acquaintance from school, and he must go to the
funeral in the principality of Sambalpore to ensure that he and Sam
can investigate further.
But the palace is not what they expect: no one can be trusted, least
of all the major in charge of the investigation, having already
seized someone as the culprit.
Wyndham's opium craving comes to the fore, clouding his judgement
and making him impatient and suspicious of those near to him.
His one time lover, Annie Grant is also in the palace, a guest of
the prince's brother, Punit, now heir to the throne, and Sam is able
to use her to get closer to the people he wants to question: the
women within the court closed to him, a white male.
These books make fascinating reading, recreating the India of the
Raj in the 1920's with a backdrop of unrest, of wanting the British
gone, of racism, the wealth of the principalities and the caste
system. The first in the stories introduced the former Scotland Yard
detective Sam Wyndham and his sergeant, Surrender-not, in A
Rising Man (2016) a duo with underlying tensions as
Surrender-not, the Harrow educated man of considerable depth and
knowledge is subordinate to the flawed Wyndham. Forays into the
zenana, the private world of the harem, a tiger hunt and splendid
dinner with the maharaja with a silver train on the table taking the
champagne to the guests, all add spice to this multi layered story.
For lovers of crime fiction, historical fiction, tales of the Raj or
simply a tale of the tension between the two main protagonists, this
is a treat.
I thoroughly enjoyed every word particularly the foreshadowing of
the eventual demise of British rule in India.
Fran Knight