The Satapur Moonstone by Sujata Massey

The Satapur Moonstone: A Perveen Mistry Novel by Sujata Massey --- 349 pages including a map, a Genealogy, a glossary and Acknowledgments.

The second book in Massey's new series set in India in the 1920s and featuring a Parsi female soliciter who works for her father's law firm when she is not solving mysteries.

Perveen is employed by the British Raj's Kolhapur Agency, which "oversees" the administration  of 25 princedoms and feudal states that are not directly ruled by the British, but must comply with British oversight.

Perveen travels to the remote mountain kingdom of Satapur to resolve a dispute between the widowed grandmother and mother of the 10-year-old heir to the throne, Prince Jiva Rao. The young prince's mother wants to send her son to England for his education.  His grandmother is adamant that her grandson remain at home with the elderly tutor who taught the prince's father and elder brother. The British agent who oversees the kingdom as the guardian of the widows and the children has been refused access to the Maharanis, because the elder Maharani insists that she and her daughter-in-law observe "purdah," the custom of strict seclusion that women from having any contact with males outside their immediate family.

Perveen hopes she can broker a compromise between the royal ladies, since she is empowered, as a representative of the Kolhapur Agency, to decide where the prince will be educated.

However, she arrives at the palace to find it is a hotbed of intrigue and cold-blooded vendettas. The royal family seems to be cursed: the last Maharaja died of cholera; his elder son died shortly after in a gruesome hunting accident. Fear for the safety of the last remaining son is at the heart of the dispute between his grandmother and mother. Adding to the tension is the late Maharaja's ambitious brother, who serves as Satapur's Prime Minister. If he has higher ambitions, he keeps them to himself, since the British would never countenance his succession to the throne.

Too late, Perveen realizes she is caught in a trap, her own life is at risk, and she has no idea who she can trust.

An exotic setting, a strong-willed and intelligent heroine, and children who are paying for the sins of the past.

Click HERE to read the * review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from the New York Journal of Books.

Click HERE to read the review from The Hindu.com

Click HERE to read the review from Aunt Agatha's blog. 

The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

The Widows of Malabar Hill: A Mystery of 1920s Bombay by Sujata Massey --- 385 pages including Glossary and Acknowledgements.

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.

Click HERE to read a profile of the author from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read a review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read a review from the UK Globe & Mail.

Click HERE to read a review from the Los Angeles Times.