Harini Nagendra: Murder Under a Red Moon
The second novel in Harini Nagendra’s charming series featuring new bride and fledgling detective, Kaveri Murthy, finds Kaveri struggling to get along with her mother in law, Bhargavi. When Bhargavi asks Kaveri as a favor to look into an embezzlement at her cousin’s husband’s factory, she reluctantly agrees, even though she feels unqualified to take on this job. When she goes to meet her mother in law’s cousin at the factory, the two women enter the factory, and find the man dead. Somehow Nagendra manages to make this almost expected death shocking and terrible, and Kaveri is caught up in taking the grieving woman back home and getting her settled. Now that the embezzlement has turned to murder, Kaveri knows she wants to investigate.