A review by pamela1221
Smoke and Ashes by Abir Mukherjee

4.0

This book was very much judged and read because I liked the cover. I don’t think there is a time period in history where I don’t enjoy a good murder especially when I am going to learn something about that period in time. It’s 1921 in this story an Englishman in India at a time of massive unrest, Sam Wyndham is a likable character with a monkey on his back in the shape of an opium addiction one that is getting harder and harder to conceal as he finds a murdered man within an opium den. A murder that will ask too many questions if he reveals it.

Sam and his partner Surrender-Not are extremely likable and I was very much looking forward to the second book only to find out that this was in fact the 3rd in the series. Colour me surprised as it is almost unheard of to find out you are in the middle of a series without the author giving you a clue that there is two books before this one. I’m not complaining too much, one of my pet peeves is when an author spends a quarter of the book re-telling the previous one so this was a total surprise and makes it an excellent standalone if you don’t want to get stuck in a series.

The thing that did kind of annoyed me was, this author is very fond of a simile, they are every where which is the reason for the markdown.