Bangalore Detectives Club

Harini Negendra: A Nest of Vipers

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Bangalore Detectives Club #3

I am a huge fan of this fledgling series set in 1920’s Bangalore.  The books are set around the same time at Sujata Massey’s Perveen Mistry books, but in a different part of India.  However, all the parts of India were experiencing the same thing: a desire for independence from their British overlords.  Massey has a book about the Prince of Wales’ visit to then colonial India, The Bombay Prince, and this is Negendra’s book about that same visit.  Gandhi was calling for peaceful protests (much like Martin Luther King) and throughout India there were welcomes for the Prince with an undercurrent of revolution.  India did not actually gain independence until 1947, so this is a story of a nascent movement, brought out of the shadows by the visit of a British royal. read more

Harini Nagendra: Murder Under a Red Moon

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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. read more