The Pinnacle: A Novel by Abir MukherjeeMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Three and a half stars.
George Abercrombie is a Hollywood actor living in Mumbai with his younger wife, the acclaimed Bollywood actress Sweety Sahota. They have an apartment in the swanky Pinnacle, a new high-rise whose multi-million dollar apartments are owned by Mumbai's rich and famous. Whilst her career is on the rise, his is in decline and he has stooped to making commercials advertising a rotgut whisky. When Sweety ducks out of accompanying George to an interview with the BBC at the last minute words are spoken. George does the interview alone and then goes out and gets ridiculously drunk.
The next morning George wakes up on the sofa, stumbles into the bedroom and finds his wife dead in a pool of her own blood on the bed. Panicked, with no real idea of what happened last night, George calls his agent for help and sends the maid out to buy a new coffee machine to get her out the apartment.
Sweety's PA Gemma is missing, so is George's man servant Amit, Sweety's laptop, and some of her jewellery. Everyone has a secret, who killed Sweety?
Yet again I have confused Vaseem Khan and Abir Mukherjee - although in my defence they have both written novels this year which are not part of their ongoing series (and I have requested ARCs of both). Anyway, this was well-plotted and managed to make a few pointed jabs about corruption and 'eveteasing' without turning the book into a political statement. My biggest disappointment was that I guessed the murderer right from the start (although not the motive) so it just felt like a slow journey to the obvious.
I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
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