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melbsreads 's review for:
A Rising Man
by Abir Mukherjee
Trigger warnings: murder, racism, slut shaming, colonialism, gun violence, apparent suicide.
This was a little slow to start, but it was SUCH a compelling story that I was hooked to my Kindle from start to finish. It's set in Calcutta in 1919. After returning to England from the First World War injured and with an addiction to opiates to find his wife dead of the Spanish Flu, Sam Wyndham decides to take up a position with the police department in Calcutta. Shortly after his arrival, an Englishman is found dead, and Sam is handed the investigation.
There was SO much fascinating stuff in this story. It's set at a time of increasing political turmoil, increasing tension between the Indian population and the British colonial powers. There's a lot of super creepy manipulation of the population in ways they don't even realise, including but not limited to putting maps of England and India side by side with no scale so that everyone assumes they're the same size.
Sam is a deeply flawed character. His offsider is Sergeant Banerjee, known to the white population as "Surrender-Not Banerjee", because they can't pronounce his first name. Banerjee is a delight, and I honestly wish the story had been at least partly from his perspective.
On the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed this. The mystery kept me guessing, the characters were great, and it was a compelling read that reminded me of Lyndsay Faye's Timothy Wilde books. All in all, I'd call it a win.
This was a little slow to start, but it was SUCH a compelling story that I was hooked to my Kindle from start to finish. It's set in Calcutta in 1919. After returning to England from the First World War injured and with an addiction to opiates to find his wife dead of the Spanish Flu, Sam Wyndham decides to take up a position with the police department in Calcutta. Shortly after his arrival, an Englishman is found dead, and Sam is handed the investigation.
There was SO much fascinating stuff in this story. It's set at a time of increasing political turmoil, increasing tension between the Indian population and the British colonial powers. There's a lot of super creepy manipulation of the population in ways they don't even realise, including but not limited to putting maps of England and India side by side with no scale so that everyone assumes they're the same size.
Sam is a deeply flawed character. His offsider is Sergeant Banerjee, known to the white population as "Surrender-Not Banerjee", because they can't pronounce his first name. Banerjee is a delight, and I honestly wish the story had been at least partly from his perspective.
On the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed this. The mystery kept me guessing, the characters were great, and it was a compelling read that reminded me of Lyndsay Faye's Timothy Wilde books. All in all, I'd call it a win.