What I liked about the book: interesting setting, authentic detail about India during British occupation, and a nice plot twist at the end. (Though I always feel like it's a bit cheat-y when the author doesn't provide the pivotal clue until the end, as happens here.) This delivers on all the basic expectations of the "detective novels set in exotic locales" genre.

Guess I'm just a little bummed because I felt like this could have been so much better. For instance, despite the great opportunity to create interestingly complex characters, Mukherjee sticks to shallow archetypes: the self-loathing detective, the humble/loyal sidekick, the spoiled prince, the feisty female agitator, the beautiful love interest. No one ever engages in any sort of interesting introspection or reflection. Also, the storytelling lags in places due to drab dialog (way too many "let me find that out for you" conversational dead ends) and too many pointless interviews - no actual detective would ask such useless questions or accept such vague answers.

As I've said before, it's hard to criticize a bad author for writing a bad book, but feel like Mukherjee's a competent writer who, with a bit more effort, could have made more of this promising premise. Maybe his "A Rising Man" (the first book in this series, I gather) incorporates some of the richness that's missing here? ( )

This is an excellent novel, combining a robust plot with immensely plausible characters, with a heavy dose of historical background of India in the 1920s thrown in. It also marks the return of Captain Sam Wyndham and his Harrow-educated colleague, ‘Surrender-Not’ Banerjee, who first appeared in A Rising Man.

Wyndham and Banerjee find themselves being driven in the Rolls Royce of the heir to the throne of Sambalpore, one of the princedoms within the Raj system whose wealth had been based on rich diamond deposits. As it happens, the prince had been at Harrow with ‘Surrender-Not’, and is expected to succeed his father to the throne fairly soon, with a broad expectation that he will continue an enlightened regime, utilising the province’s wealth to improve the life of the subjects. Such specualtions prove irrelevant, however, when the prince is assassinated. Wyndham and Banerjee pursue the assailant, but are initially unable to apprehend him. They do catch up with him the following day, following up anonymously provided clues, but the assassin shoots himself before he can be arrested. Further leads point to Sambalpore itself, and as a consequence, Wyndham and Banerjee find themselves despatched there to pursue their investigations, and find a wide range of potential suspects.

I have to profess to being lamentably ignorant of Indian history, and the panoply of religious beliefs, which play some part in the story. Abir Mukherjee manages these elements deftly, being hugely informative while never letting the transfer of knowledge compromise the flow of the story. ( )

The setting in the sequel to A Rising Man takes the reader from Calcutta to a princely state in a dry region where diamond mines provide the opulent living for the royal family. Mukherjee's writing style has improved, giving the reader a more atmospheric sense of this new territory and a three-dimensional look to the characters.

While the plotting was needlessly convoluted from time to time, the saga was intriguing and reasonably suspenseful. The irritating aspects in the narrative are the antics by the Annie Grant character and the finale at the end. Annie's participation was artificially introduced and given too much irrelevant interaction with the main characters. These passages don't lend anything to moving the story forward. Ultimately, the rushed dénouement was frenetic and unsatisfying, even though the novel was otherwise entertaining. ( )

Yep - I’m going to binge-read this series .... ( )

Like this a bit less than the first, mostly for the plot machinations at the end- a fortuitous melange of revelations that boggles the mind. I guess I’ll keep going because the time period of the end of the British Raj and incipient Indian emancipation is interesting. ( )