Review: The Burning Grounds

The Burning Grounds by Abir Mukherjee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

The book opens with Sam Wyndham investigating the body of a man left at the burning ghats, which ordinarily would be perfectly normal, it is after all where the Bengalis of Calcutta bring their dead. However, the man has had his throat slit and Sam can already tell that the body is that of none other than JP Mullick, Indian entrepreneur and industrialist. Sam is in disgrace at work for various reasons, so he is astonished when his boss allows him to investigate JP’s murder.

Meanwhile, Sam’s friend/former partner Suren Banerjee, who has spent the last three years in Europe, has recently returned at his father’s request/command. Suren had fallen in love with a French girl, Elise, while in Paris and is feeling rather love-sick but he must honour his father’s wishes. Suren is ordered by his father to investigate the disappearance of his cousin Dolly. Dolly has always trodden an unusual path for an unmarried Indian woman, setting up her own photography business for women only. However, her reputation has been besmirched by rumours that she has been associating with beggars and street women (and taking their photos). Dolly has gone missing, and her family are concerned.

Despite their mutual prickliness after not having spoken in three years, especially when Sam discovers Suren has been back in India for over a month without contacting him, Sam and Suren agree to work together to try to discover who murdered JP and where Dolly has gone. Perhaps inevitably, it turns out that the two investigations are linked.

This is apparently the sixth book in a series featuring an Indian policeman and a British detective, Suren Banerjee and Sam Wyndham set in 1920s Calcutta. I had read a book featuring an Indian female police officer and a British Scotland Yard criminalist by Vaseem Khan about a year ago and without paying much attention thought this was the same series. However, this was reasonably easy to read as a standalone novel.

I liked it, but I didn’t love it. Sam wasn’t a particularly likable character, in fact I don’t think any of the characters were likable, there was both too much politics and not enough at the same time. By which I mean that, for all his feelings of British superiority, Sam speaks in a very modern way about the tyranny of the British occupation of India which I don’t think a man of his time would have done. Similarly, Suren is apparently pro-independence and yet doesn’t actually seem to be doing anything about it, just wandering around with no purpose (although that’s just me judging him for abandoning the love of his life with no farewell just because his father decreed it.

The plot itself was good, but I have read something similar before (without spoilering the why) and so it was nothing new.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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