Scan barcode
motherofladybirds's review against another edition
3.0
I ENJOY THIS DETECTIVE SERIES SET IN iNDIA. tHIS TIME sAM AND sURENRANATH ARE MIXED UP IN INTERACIAL TENSIONS AND PLOTS TO DESTABILIZE iNDIA.
mja002's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
nigellicus's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
5.0
The stalwart Surendrenath gets a voice in this volume of the mystery series, talking over half the narration with a decidedly different viewpoint to that of his good friend Sam. With tensions between Muslim and Hindu running high, Surendernath finds himself under suspicion of a murder that is tearing the city apart - with the help of Sam, he goes on the run to clear his name, solve the murder and uncover a dagerous plot. An exciting adventure thriller.
mlafaive's review
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
nicjohnston's review against another edition
5.0
The Shadows of Men is the 5th outing for Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee, an immensely enjoyable historical crime series set in India as the Empire wobbles.
At the start of this adventure we join Surendranath who is in serious trouble. Apparently exiled from his role in the Imperial Police and fighting for his freedom. Trouble is the order of time, as religious tensions spill over into violence in Calcutta and prominent leaders find themselves in danger. Both Sam and Surendranath find themselves struggling to unravel who is the puppet master behind the troubles and how best to ensure Surendranath’s liberty can be restored.
Abir Mukherjee has created an absolutely scintillating series. The first outing, A Rising Man, was a Waterstones pick and a New Blood choice at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. Every book since has been excellent and has pushed boundaries in quality, plot and character development. The Shadows of Men is a fantastic read, drawing on politics, religious tensions and pulling the reader to India as changes become increasingly inevitable.
This would work well as a stand-alone but the series is well worth reading in its entirety.
Thanks to Harvill Secker, Vintage and Netgalley for an ARC.
At the start of this adventure we join Surendranath who is in serious trouble. Apparently exiled from his role in the Imperial Police and fighting for his freedom. Trouble is the order of time, as religious tensions spill over into violence in Calcutta and prominent leaders find themselves in danger. Both Sam and Surendranath find themselves struggling to unravel who is the puppet master behind the troubles and how best to ensure Surendranath’s liberty can be restored.
Abir Mukherjee has created an absolutely scintillating series. The first outing, A Rising Man, was a Waterstones pick and a New Blood choice at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. Every book since has been excellent and has pushed boundaries in quality, plot and character development. The Shadows of Men is a fantastic read, drawing on politics, religious tensions and pulling the reader to India as changes become increasingly inevitable.
This would work well as a stand-alone but the series is well worth reading in its entirety.
Thanks to Harvill Secker, Vintage and Netgalley for an ARC.
cardica's review against another edition
2022 on your Murder Mystery World Tour featured more than our usual share of thrillers, both in our interviews with authors, and our full-features on the show. Coming in at 8th place for our 2022 recommendations is The Shadows of Men, Abir Mukherjee’s fifth Sam Wyndham and Surendrenath Banerjee novel. This is Review Season, you’re listening to Death of the Reader on 2ser 107.3. Sam and Suren have been through a lot, over their tenure together. Over the course of their series, from A Rising Man, to today’s novel, they’ve stood side by side at their best and worst moments, but never before, has Surendrenath been given the turbulent, tumultuous and terrific control of the narrative that he gets in The Shadows of Men, and by golly, Abir Mukherjee has given him one hell of a debut in the driver’s seat.
It’d be just about impossible to list all of the reasons the city of Calcutta is buried in violence during The Shadows of Men. The novel is set in one of the many peaks of anarchy that shook the then-colonial nation, before Partition. In ‘Golakatta Gullee’, or ‘Cutthroat Alley’, you are greeted by Sam’s meeting with one of the many crime families taking advantage of the chaos. The scene establishes Sam Wyndham is embedded in the game, playing just dirty enough to prevent the worst from happening, or so he tells himself. Mid-bargain with Uddam ‘The Lion’ Singh, it turns out Suren has missed his cue to give the crime-boss what he wanted, and Sam has to abandon the trade to hunt down his partner. Suren has gotten himself arrested! Fortunately for Sam, as a dirty cop, it’s easy to overturn a simple crime like…murder? Oh that might be a bit more complicated.
Suren, it turns out, is accused of the strangulation of Prashant Mukherjee. He insists he found the body already dead, but his admission to lighting the crime scene on fire isn’t doing him any favours. If you’re trying to get a dirty cop off a charges of murder and arson, you might have to take it right to the top, to Lord Commissioner Taggart, who might just be attacked seconds after agreeing with your assessment of the case. Unfortunately for Sam, that’s exactly what happens, and Suren realises there’s no jumping back up from this cliff. From this point on, Suren is on the run, trying both to solve the murder he’s accused of, and avoid being caught. Conflict in Calcutta once again boils over, creating the perfect cover, but also the cruelest obstacle. As Suren works his way through a burning city, it’s clear that he’s not the only one following these footsteps.
Decorated with a dynamic expanded cast of police, military, criminals, criminals-in-all-but-name, and of course potential love interests, The Shadows of Men is never left wanting for the most interesting person possible to provide themselves to the page. Given all the mess Sam and Suren seem committed to getting into, it’s genuinely a miracle that they have as many allies on tap as they do. If you were to fumble as many favours as these two, I’d forgive your friends for skipping your birthday party, let alone flaunting the law to get you out of your latest failure. Abir brilliantly uses his broader cast as a road for us to walk down towards the next room wherein Wyndham and Banerjee buffoonishly bury themselves in deeper trouble. At some points, it’s hardly believable they’re actually making progress on solving the crime.
The Shadows of Men keeps up a typically thriller pace, with Sam and Suren going from one extravagant hazard to the next. One scintillating source of momentum for the action is the trading perspectives between our leading pair. The timeline isn’t entirely linear, jumping you back and forward between events as the cinematic camera captures every angle, even when the two are physically side-by-side. It screams the flavour of classic action cinematography, wherein the camera winds back just a few frames to really sell that punch. The subtle push and pull avoids the repetitious feeling you might get in more explicit flashbacks or flashes forward, and the flavour of this particular page turner is the constant falling downhill until Sam and Suren inevitably collide, and then the hill abruptly getting steeper and sillier once they’re back in each other’s embrace.
The mystery in The Shadows of Men isn’t complex, nor is it particularly meant to be. The only real sin you might feel it committing is that there isn’t really any reward for trying to get ahead of the beat, instead focusing on its own confidently clamorous rhythm. The downhill tumble through absurd event after absurd event won’t feel nearly as tidily organised as Abir has secretly made it, and that’s just the right flavour of chaos. As Sam and Suren fail their way forward, the real mystery is how they’re able to get away with it all, and how many pieces compose the insane domino-run Abir has crafted. When you finally reach where the two tumbling tracks Sam and Suren have been following collide, the linking point is viscerally satisfying. Those emotions flow seamlessly into an ending you’ll find very different depending on which hook has sunk deepest into you from the novel, but the specifics of that you’ll have to read for yourself.
The Shadows of Men takes out 8th place on our 2022 recommendations this season because even though it might be a misfit in the mystery-oriented criteria we set out, the same nuanced and detailed construction we love forms the foundation of the novel. That method might serve an entirely different purpose, but the near-slapstick terminal velocity The Shadows of Men operates at scratches all the right itches.
This is Review Season on your Murder Mystery World Tour, Death of the Reader. The Shadows of Men by Abir Mukherjee is out with Penguin in Australia, and thanks to Abir for joining us on the show to dive all the way into the weeds about it. Whilst you’re subscribing to Death of the Reader, you should also go check out Abir’s podcast with fellow author [a:Vaseem Khan|13340713|Vaseem Khan|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1599649623p2/13340713.jpg], the Red Hot Chilli Writers podcast.
It’d be just about impossible to list all of the reasons the city of Calcutta is buried in violence during The Shadows of Men. The novel is set in one of the many peaks of anarchy that shook the then-colonial nation, before Partition. In ‘Golakatta Gullee’, or ‘Cutthroat Alley’, you are greeted by Sam’s meeting with one of the many crime families taking advantage of the chaos. The scene establishes Sam Wyndham is embedded in the game, playing just dirty enough to prevent the worst from happening, or so he tells himself. Mid-bargain with Uddam ‘The Lion’ Singh, it turns out Suren has missed his cue to give the crime-boss what he wanted, and Sam has to abandon the trade to hunt down his partner. Suren has gotten himself arrested! Fortunately for Sam, as a dirty cop, it’s easy to overturn a simple crime like…murder? Oh that might be a bit more complicated.
Suren, it turns out, is accused of the strangulation of Prashant Mukherjee. He insists he found the body already dead, but his admission to lighting the crime scene on fire isn’t doing him any favours. If you’re trying to get a dirty cop off a charges of murder and arson, you might have to take it right to the top, to Lord Commissioner Taggart, who might just be attacked seconds after agreeing with your assessment of the case. Unfortunately for Sam, that’s exactly what happens, and Suren realises there’s no jumping back up from this cliff. From this point on, Suren is on the run, trying both to solve the murder he’s accused of, and avoid being caught. Conflict in Calcutta once again boils over, creating the perfect cover, but also the cruelest obstacle. As Suren works his way through a burning city, it’s clear that he’s not the only one following these footsteps.
Decorated with a dynamic expanded cast of police, military, criminals, criminals-in-all-but-name, and of course potential love interests, The Shadows of Men is never left wanting for the most interesting person possible to provide themselves to the page. Given all the mess Sam and Suren seem committed to getting into, it’s genuinely a miracle that they have as many allies on tap as they do. If you were to fumble as many favours as these two, I’d forgive your friends for skipping your birthday party, let alone flaunting the law to get you out of your latest failure. Abir brilliantly uses his broader cast as a road for us to walk down towards the next room wherein Wyndham and Banerjee buffoonishly bury themselves in deeper trouble. At some points, it’s hardly believable they’re actually making progress on solving the crime.
The Shadows of Men keeps up a typically thriller pace, with Sam and Suren going from one extravagant hazard to the next. One scintillating source of momentum for the action is the trading perspectives between our leading pair. The timeline isn’t entirely linear, jumping you back and forward between events as the cinematic camera captures every angle, even when the two are physically side-by-side. It screams the flavour of classic action cinematography, wherein the camera winds back just a few frames to really sell that punch. The subtle push and pull avoids the repetitious feeling you might get in more explicit flashbacks or flashes forward, and the flavour of this particular page turner is the constant falling downhill until Sam and Suren inevitably collide, and then the hill abruptly getting steeper and sillier once they’re back in each other’s embrace.
The mystery in The Shadows of Men isn’t complex, nor is it particularly meant to be. The only real sin you might feel it committing is that there isn’t really any reward for trying to get ahead of the beat, instead focusing on its own confidently clamorous rhythm. The downhill tumble through absurd event after absurd event won’t feel nearly as tidily organised as Abir has secretly made it, and that’s just the right flavour of chaos. As Sam and Suren fail their way forward, the real mystery is how they’re able to get away with it all, and how many pieces compose the insane domino-run Abir has crafted. When you finally reach where the two tumbling tracks Sam and Suren have been following collide, the linking point is viscerally satisfying. Those emotions flow seamlessly into an ending you’ll find very different depending on which hook has sunk deepest into you from the novel, but the specifics of that you’ll have to read for yourself.
The Shadows of Men takes out 8th place on our 2022 recommendations this season because even though it might be a misfit in the mystery-oriented criteria we set out, the same nuanced and detailed construction we love forms the foundation of the novel. That method might serve an entirely different purpose, but the near-slapstick terminal velocity The Shadows of Men operates at scratches all the right itches.
This is Review Season on your Murder Mystery World Tour, Death of the Reader. The Shadows of Men by Abir Mukherjee is out with Penguin in Australia, and thanks to Abir for joining us on the show to dive all the way into the weeds about it. Whilst you’re subscribing to Death of the Reader, you should also go check out Abir’s podcast with fellow author [a:Vaseem Khan|13340713|Vaseem Khan|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1599649623p2/13340713.jpg], the Red Hot Chilli Writers podcast.
liberrydude's review against another edition
4.0
Wyndham and Bannerjee work to subvert a plot to foment Hindu vs Muslim violence in Calcutta that takes them to Bombay. Bannerjee goes undercover at the direction of the commissioner who is then attacked and in critical condition. Crazy logic of the British has Bannerjee responsible as well as for the death of a Hindu politician. The duo find themselves often at cross purposes with their own government and wanted men. Indeed Imperial fiefdoms are acting against each other. Wondering if this is the last adventure as the ending leaves an opening for a major reset for both characters.
debbiemv's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
extraaardvark's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
daniel_mc_adam's review against another edition
5.0
What a book it is truly one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.
Now I have to find the time to start from The First Book in The Series to The Fourth one.
A Rising Man
A Necessary Evil
Smoke & Ashes
Death In The East.
Really Looking forward to reading these very soon.
Now I have to find the time to start from The First Book in The Series to The Fourth one.
A Rising Man
A Necessary Evil
Smoke & Ashes
Death In The East.
Really Looking forward to reading these very soon.