A new historical mystery series by Sujata Massey, set in the legal community of 1920s Bombay, during the last decades of the British Raj, and featuring a female sleuth modeled in part upon the lives of the first Indian women to practice law in India in the 1920s.
Parveen Mistry has returned home to Bombay after receiving her law degree from Oxford University to fulfill her father's dream and join him in his successful law practice. Although Perveen's Oxford degree automatically admits her to the Bombay Bar, female solicitors are still not allowed to represent clients in court, but she can handle all the rest of the work involved. Her father assigns her what should be a routine case, executing the will of a wealthy Muslim mill owner and the inheritances of his three widows and four minor children. Since the widows and children live in purdah --- strict seclusion from all men except their closest male relatives --- in the zenana --- walled off woman's quarters --- of their husband's house on Malabar Hill, only Perveen can have direct contact with their clients.
Their husband had appointed a male guardian to look after the house and the widows while the estate is settled, but Perveen suspects that this guardian, Faisal Mukri, is taking advantage of the women. Her efforts to investigate the situation soon reveals tensions and rivalries simmering beneath the surface in the house on Malabar Hill.
In counterpoint to the widows' story we also learn of events in Perveen's life five years earlier that make her especially sensitive to the exploitation of vulnerable women in a time and place when traditions, prejudices and laws are all weighted in favor of men.
The first in a promising new series of historical mysteries with a proto-feminist sleath and a culturally diverse setting.
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