{"id":5666,"date":"2024-05-02T09:03:23","date_gmt":"2024-05-02T16:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5666"},"modified":"2024-05-02T09:03:23","modified_gmt":"2024-05-02T16:03:23","slug":"harini-negendra-a-nest-of-vipers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/harini-negendra-a-nest-of-vipers\/","title":{"rendered":"Harini Negendra: A Nest of Vipers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bangalore Detectives Club #3<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I am a huge fan of this fledgling series set in 1920\u2019s Bangalore.\u00a0 The books are set around the same time at Sujata Massey\u2019s Perveen Mistry books, but in a different part of India.\u00a0 However, all the parts of India were experiencing the same thing: a desire for independence from their British overlords.\u00a0 Massey has a book about the Prince of Wales’ visit to then colonial India, The Bombay Prince, <\/em>and this is Negendra\u2019s book about that same visit.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Negendra opens her novel with a luscious visit to a circus \u2013 she\u2019s excellent at setting and at populating a scene and bringing it fully to life.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the things I love most about these books.\u00a0 Our heroine, Kaveri Murthy, and her handsome doctor husband, Ramu, have received free tickets and are sitting toward the front of the house next to a British doctor and his sister and they\u2019ve brought along their friend Anandi (met in previous books). The headliner is a magician who actually asks to meet the Murthys before the performance \u2013 he\u2019s heard of Kaveri\u2019s \u201cdetective club\u201d and seems interested in her help.<\/p>\n

The magician is the main attraction, and when he and his son take the stage, chaos ensues halfway through the performance, with a gang of masked men surging through the crowd, robbing the rich people in the front rows.\u00a0 The magician disappears, leaving his son behind, and the brutal ex husband of their beloved Anandi is discovered dead in the resulting confusion, with Anandi the apparent murderer.\u00a0 Kaveri\u2019s task through this book is twofold: reuniting the magician\u2019s son with his father and proving Anandi\u2019s innocence.<\/p>\n

Troublingly, Anandi has turned cold toward Kaveri and then vanishes; and Kaveri\u2019s former police ally, Inspector Ismail, has turned similarly cold toward her.\u00a0 In the past, he had welcomed her help; now, he will hardly speak to her. In the last book Kaveri and her mother in-law made peace with one another; in this book, her mother in law is frequently absent, forcing Kaveri to consider how she might spend her time if not with her studies or with her mother in law.\u00a0 Her detective club meetings \u2013 populated by women she\u2019s met through her work \u2013 are her saving grace.<\/p>\n

In each novel, Kaveri grows a little bit as a person, and the strong binding thread is the love she and Ramu have for one another.\u00a0 While he worries about her, he still allows her the freedom to make her own choices about how she\u2019ll proceed.\u00a0 So while she\u2019s handicapped by the loss of Ismail\u2019s support and Anandi\u2019s friendship, she still moves forward, helping the magician\u2019s young son and attempting to discover the true killer of Anandi\u2019s husband.<\/p>\n

The Bangalore setting is textured and the other thread of this novel \u2013 the thread of the growing independence movement \u2013 is subtly tied into the plot in an extremely nuanced manner.\u00a0 Nagendra manages to capture a spectrum of complicated feelings on the part of the people she\u2019s portraying in the novel.\u00a0 There\u2019s a thought that a riot or violence accompanying the prince\u2019s visit will make things worse for the movement and set it back, so the other tension involves whether violence will indeed break out before the end of the book.<\/p>\n

Like Elizabeth Peters and Dorothy Gilman before her, Nagendra is truly a writer not just of detective stories but of adventure stories, stories that also embrace and celebrate a culture.\u00a0 Unlike Peters and Gilman she is writing about her own culture, which makes it a very resonant reading experience.\u00a0 However, I\u2019m certain that Amelia Peabody, Mrs. Pollifax and young Kaveri Murthy would happily enjoy one another\u2019s company.\u00a0 This is an utterly delightful series.\u00a0\u00a0— Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bangalore Detectives Club #3 I am a huge fan of this fledgling series set in 1920\u2019s Bangalore.\u00a0 The books are set around the same time at Sujata Massey\u2019s Perveen Mistry books, but in a different part of India.\u00a0 However, all the parts of India were experiencing the same thing: a desire for independence from their … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1116,1659,1109,1012,1660,1111,1108,154],"class_list":["post-5666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1920s-bangalore","tag-a-nest-of-vipers","tag-bangalore-detectives-club","tag-harini-negendra","tag-indian-independence","tag-kaveri-murthy","tag-magicians","tag-pegasus-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5666"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5694,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5666\/revisions\/5694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}