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iygatac_reads 's review for:
A Necessary Evil
by Abir Mukherjee
I considered rating this conservatively and giving it a 3. But ya know what, I definitely "really liked it." Like, okay, I totally got confused at the library and thought this was a complete standalone and only after getting partway through and looking up info about the book to write about it, did I realize that this is the second in a series. But, I don't think that detracted from my reading experience.
As a crime/mystery novel, pretty good, I guess. I'm no real judge of this because this isn't my usual genre at all. But it did keep me guessing and I was consistently engaged in the story, wondering what actually happened and turning the pages. Lots of times I was surprised and the mystery felt really complex in a good way.
The reason this book got 4 stars from me, the real reason, is because as a historical fiction novel, it grabbed my heart and didn't let go, okay? Ugh! Like, let's be real here, the moment I saw this was a historical fic/crime/mystery set in 1920s India, I HAD to check it out of the library (the haste with which I did is probably why it took me so long to realize it's actually the second in a series). Like, I LEARNED things, like the fact that the man whose name is on the Henry Fingerprint System took the credit for the work that Haque and Bose, two Indian men, had done to create this fingerprint classification system. And just a lot of things in here where it was like "that's a word that I know what it's supposed to sound like!" AND AND, and I think this is really important - while the narrator in this story is a white man with the Indian man as the secondary main, I think it's super important that the AUTHOR is an Indian man. It makes the narrative of a white man in 1920s India actually the opposite of cringeworthy.
I'll go back and read book 1 and probably continue to read this series.
It really is just such a different feel of novel than what I usually gravitate toward when I want to have something that can keep me engaged and I'm thinking that the specifics of most popular novels of this genre are probably what's kept me away so far and this has shown me that I can actually enjoy the genre !
As a crime/mystery novel, pretty good, I guess. I'm no real judge of this because this isn't my usual genre at all. But it did keep me guessing and I was consistently engaged in the story, wondering what actually happened and turning the pages. Lots of times I was surprised and the mystery felt really complex in a good way.
The reason this book got 4 stars from me, the real reason, is because as a historical fiction novel, it grabbed my heart and didn't let go, okay? Ugh! Like, let's be real here, the moment I saw this was a historical fic/crime/mystery set in 1920s India, I HAD to check it out of the library (the haste with which I did is probably why it took me so long to realize it's actually the second in a series). Like, I LEARNED things, like the fact that the man whose name is on the Henry Fingerprint System took the credit for the work that Haque and Bose, two Indian men, had done to create this fingerprint classification system. And just a lot of things in here where it was like "that's a word that I know what it's supposed to sound like!" AND AND, and I think this is really important - while the narrator in this story is a white man with the Indian man as the secondary main, I think it's super important that the AUTHOR is an Indian man. It makes the narrative of a white man in 1920s India actually the opposite of cringeworthy.
I'll go back and read book 1 and probably continue to read this series.
It really is just such a different feel of novel than what I usually gravitate toward when I want to have something that can keep me engaged and I'm thinking that the specifics of most popular novels of this genre are probably what's kept me away so far and this has shown me that I can actually enjoy the genre !