Somehow Sam Wyndham survived the Great War and was recruited to continue his career as a detective in Calcutta. Captain Wyndham proves to be a pretty interesting fellow. He's trying to forget his late wife, who died of the flu, his friends, almost all of whom are buried in France and Belgium, and facilitates his forgetting with an opium habit. In his day job, the nabobs of the Raj seem to want to impede his every move investigating the death of one of the Lieutenant-Governor's aides, who was apparently done in by locals bent on evicting the British. Wyndham and his Bengali sergeant stay one step ahead of military intelligence. Of course, matters are not what they appear. They unearth depravity and cynical evil in the highest reaches of the government.
I have said many, many times that the attraction of historical novels is their ability to provide insight to different times and places. I have not read about India in this time period and this first time novelist, the Scottish-born son of natives of Calcutta, does a fabulous job elaborating on the nascent freedom movement that was burgeoning after a century-and-a-half of British rule. The relationship between Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee will apparently be the basis of a new series. Often, modern writers handle the sexism and racism of earlier times with a heavy, uncomfortable hand. This young man has shown a deft touch.
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