Sujata Massey Provides Fifth India Mystery, A STAR FROM CALCUTTA, with Perveen Mistry

For the only female lawyer in Bombay in 1922, it seems every situation offers a new challenge. Can Perveen maintain her dignity in a culture that's suspicious of women in new roles? Will her father allow her to tackle important cases, or will his natural tendency to protect her always diminish her role? 

And, for those who've been following this Soho Press series that began with The Widows of Malabar Hill, will Perveen and her (very much forbidden) European heartthrob be able to keep their relationship adequately hidden?

On the monsoon-soaked morning that opens A STAR FROM CALCUTTA, Perveen's father announces that their day is already committed to a new client: Champa Films, owned by Subhas Ghoshal and his actress wife from Calcutta. Perveen quickly says, "No introduction needed! I'm familiar with his films and the Calcutta star he's married."

And it's the star that has caught Perveen's attention -- "Rochana's involved in sword fights and riding runaway horses and car chases. She's quite famous for being the best at it."

This isn't reassuring for her father, who prefers the formality of Parsi theater. But to Perveen's surprise, he already has a plan to place her as lead counsel in the case, which is about Rochana the actress. At the film studio Jamshedji tells the producer, "I will always be available, but I believe it would be more appropriate for my eminently qualified daughter to be your chief counsel."

Soon the case takes on fresh complications -- a death, a disappearance, roaming film animals (all too real), and a labor strike. Is the film company too broke to pay properly? Why has Rochana vanished? And where is the girlfriend Perveen's brought with her, who should be helping to maintain propriety in this wild compound of scantily garbed and possibly cocaine-high performers?

How will Perveen handle a court appearance, a coroner's results, and the complications of culture classes? With Massey's smooth writing and clever plot twists, this is a delightful page-turner rich with details of a nation entering global modernity ... and with the often difficult changes in expectations for women and the people who care about them.

Well paced and satisfying, with nearly 400 pages, this sequel shows Massey taking firm hold of her material and well aware of the expectations of the genre. It's a good change from the standard American legal thriller, a comfortable "read," and offers insight into the divided cultural landscape of one of today's Great Powers. More on the author, here: sujatamassey.com.  And for reviews of earlier titles in the series, click here.

 

Buckle Up for a Wild Ride of Murder and Snort-Your-Coffee Humor with Karsten Dusse, MURDER MINDFULLY

The classics of darkly funny crime fiction are feeling a bit dated -- who reads Donald Westlake's caper mysteries now? Of course, there are a lot of murder clubs and sleuth clubs overlapping into public television, but a lot of the humor there comes from the slightly worn-out trope of elderly ladies snooping around (hello, Miss Marple) and younger ones tumbling into chaos.

So hurrah for German lawyer and TV writer Karsten Dusse, whose 2019 book Achtsam Morden arrived on the US market this year, thanks to translator Florian Duijsens and Soho Press. Even the title is a very funny tease: MURDER MINDFULLY.

Björn Diemel is a very harassed attorney. Working for a big firm where he's responsible for successful criminal defense of violent offenders and psychopaths (sociopaths? both??), he's clear-eyed about his career: "Even my wife occasionally found my work rather questionable. But explaining our legal system to other people wasn't my job. My job was to exploit that system using every trick in the book. I made my money doing good for bad people."

Even though he knows he's doing exactly the work he's supposed to, and excellently, Diemel gets stressed by all this. Now his wife's fed up, but giving him one last chance -- which he'll grab, because he's desperate to have time with the little daughter he adores (and who he rarely sees already, due to Work).  

Which puts him into sessions with a mindfulness expert, for the sake of all that. Because even when he can spend time with his daughter, his mind is racing for work issues.

Joschka Breitner is more than willing to teach Diemel to pull himself back together through intention, focus, true mindfulness. But you know that thing about unintended consequences? It probably applies. After his first lesson, which even eases the tension in his neck, Diemel is fully appreciative:

"It was to be several weeks, however, before I realized that what Breitner revealed next would become the mantra for my first murder."

After all, when you're responsible for a shady criminal who sees accidental murders along the way as your problem to solve -- and he's "not only a brutal pimp, but also a big drug and arms dealer" -- and Dragan Sergowicz starts interfering with all the commitments to mindfully parenting and being courteous to the menacing mother of your child -- well, what tools are at hand for resolving things? 

It turns out that mindfulness coaching can lead to some very effective solutions! Of course, they might not be legal. Or morally great. But if they work?

Half the fun of this European farce of almost 400 pages is realizing, just a second ahead of Diemel, how he's going to apply his latest mindfulness lesson. Clear the calendar for the weekend, for this very entertaining page turner.

BIG NEWS: MURDER MINDFULLY is a debut, but Soho Press has clearly been working hard at catching up -- and the translation of the next book in this Mindful Murder series,  MY INNER CHILD WANTS TO KILL, will release in August. By then, you may be ready to apply more of the lessons that you and Diemel are painstakingly learning!

 

New Taipei Night Market Crime Novel from Ed Lin, THE DEAD CAN'T MAKE A LIVING

 

If you are an American or a European, you may feel like "immigrants" is a fighting word where you live -- the kind of issue that lures people into strong positions and sometimes regrettable statements. Your region's not the only one struggling with issues of migration, migrant workers, and immigration, though.

Ed Lin's newest Taipei Night Market novel (I reviewed Incensed, 99 Ways to Die, and Death Doesn't Forget - click on those) releases from Soho Crime on April 7, but of course you can pre-order it if you like. And THE DEAD CAN'T MAKE A LIVING is so packed with humor, peril, and plot twists that you might as well line up a copy to get you through whatever crises you feel like you are just barely handling.

 It helps if you know what the night market is in Taiwan, but Lin is expert at pulling you into the action with deft strokes of explanation. During his first class session at the night college that Jing-nan recently signed up for, to improve his life options, he's ready with a self-intro: "I want to tell you about my daily life, what it's like at the Shilin Night Market, where I have a stand called Unknown Pleasures. Visitors from every continent around the world love our skewers."

 But his very nasty teacher would rather tell the class about all the crimes Jing-nan's been involved with, calling them "stunts" and saying Jing-nan is associated with figures from Taiwan's underworld.

 Well, that last part is true, but it's not something Jing-nan would talk about --  he does have family members who carry clout in the criminal world. With such a nasty teacher, he's glad to know others will back him up, even though there's always a price to pay for that kind of support, isn't there?

The crux of this crime novel begins to unfold just a few pages in, as a group of Filipino customers are taking up a lot of the seats when Jing-nan gets back to his food stand. His quick math indicates they've spent a lot of money on his food, and he's glad to encourage them.

"We're happy to have generous customers like you. Thank you all so much." I meant it sincerely. These weren't tourists from the Philippines. They were migrant workers, and some had been taking the government Mandarin classes. Maybe they were from the nearby food-processing plant. ... they streamed into the night market, which offered a lot of food and entertainment for relatively cheap. I put my hands together and bowed my head slightly to my customers, a universal sign of humility and appreciation for their business. 

For Jing-nan, that amounts to a commitment to see even these migrant workers treated well. So when one of them is clearly murdered, and another asks him for help finding out what happened, this chef and "adult student" agrees to look into the death.

Soon he's in too deep to back out, and even his uncle Big Eye can't stop bad things from happening to him. Ever the entrepreneur, he speculates on the value of adding a crime blog to his food blog:

My crime posts wouldn't be journalistic and dry. They would start on a visceral note: "Two hours in, blood from my loosened molar continued to drip down my throat. I asked for a drink of water to wash away the metallic taste, but my kidnapper refused. It was going to be a long night."

Will Jing-nan ever make it back to class? Actually, with his relatives interfering on his behalf, will his nasty teacher make it back?? And how will all of this affect his bottom line, his de facto marriage to Nancy, and his ability to staff his food stand?

Admit it. You have to know what happens next. I did ... I couldn't put this one down. 

When the Author Builds Herself a World: Nicola Griffith, SHE IS HERE

Last July I mentioned Nicola Griffith, whose lush noir crime fiction can be a slow-read delight. At that point, her Aud Torvingen trilogy, featuring a Norwegian-born detective, was just being reissued, and is now easy to grab for American readers: The Blue Place; Stay; and Always.

Griffith is better known for her award-winning world-building in science fiction/speculative fiction. But she teases that you may not have heard of her books (especially if you're not reading sci-fi), but you've heard of the authors who praise herhis sleuthing series: Dennis Lehane, Val McDermid, Dorothy Allison, Lee Child, Manda Scott, Francis Spufford, Laurie King, Ivy Pochoda, Robert Crais, Elizabeth Hand, James Sallis and more.

So when the independent PM Press focused on Griffith in its "Outspoken Authors" series this winter, I set everything else aside to read SHE IS HERE, a slim compendium of Griffith's nonfiction, poetry, and short stories. It's not the most polished work I've picked up, but it's definitely compelling. 

As an example, in a "letter" to Hild, who ran an early Anglo-Saxon (Early Medieval) abbey and is better known as St. Hilda (protagonist of the award-winning novel Hild, pictured above), Griffith tells this historical personage brought to life that "On some level, you made me."

Of all the women remembered by history -- even sketchily -- you're the onlyu one I know of who lived on her own terms. Your renown was not as anyone's parent or wife, or for suffering unspeakable torment or a martyr's death. All you achieved was a person ion your own right. You lived a long and successful life and died admired and powerful. You won.

You won. That single fact, that women can win, helped counterbalance all the nonsense I'd absorbed from history. Partly because I stood on those ruins and saw what you had made, I knew we could each triumph on our own terms and in our own service.

When you notice that Griffiths describes herself on her website as a "queer cripple with a PhD," her self-discovery through Hild rings even more powerfully. And as a fictional world-builder, she clearly walks in company with such powerful writers as Margaret Atwood and J.R.R. Tolkein.

Give yourself a treat, a stretch, a vivid entry into the mind of an outstanding author. Grab a copy of SHE IS HERE. When you've finished reading it, maybe give it to the local library, for all the folks who otherwise might not notice an invitation into this potent adventure.